Art Watch

Cannonball Arts photo credit Jim Bennett

Dynamic new art spaces on the Seattle scene are enlivening the downtown core and beyond. Cannonball Arts opened last August, filling a sprawling 66,000-square-foot building with art across multiple disciplines, mediums, and genres, including immersive experiences. Among its inaugural exhibits, you can ride a mechanical, larger-than-life-size felted wool nudibranch (a type of sea slug) and explore a sculpture that also serves as a human shelter. In the lobby, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe—who act as gallery collaborators—have created space for live canoe carving.

The iconic 1916 former Coliseum theater building, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Pike Street, has been transformed by the women-run and -funded Actualize Artist in Residency to accommodate 30 artist studios, two galleries, and a coworking space. Just a hop-skip from the downtown waterfront, Native-centered Tidelands gallery contains a studio for creators in photography, film, and podcast production. Find photographer (of Project 562 fame) Matika Wilbur’s permanent collection here, along with rotating exhibits, musical performances, poetry readings, and other compelling events.

Stonington Gallery Rudy Willingham

In Pioneer Square, Taswira showcases emerging African and Black contemporary artists. Founder Avery Barnes began the organization as a way to support female artisans she was working with while developing a women’s center in Kenya.

Promoting South Asian films, art, and storytelling, Tasveer has found a permanent home in Columbia City’s historic Ark Lodge Cinema, now called the Tasveer Film Arts Center, which the organization will be fully renovating over the next few years. In the meantime, the producers of the acclaimed Tasveer Film Festival in October are already presenting arts programs and events in their new space.
Renowned Traver Gallery has been drawing acclaim for more than 40 years but took its glass, painting, sculpture, and installation art to a bold new location in 2025, an industrial former fish cannery building along the Lake Washington Ship Canal across from Ballard. It shares space with Vetri Gallery, which showcases glass objets d’art great and small.