Arts
Steins Up: 7 Washington Oktoberfests to Celebrate Fall
From Fremont’s three-day bash to Leavenworth’s Bavarian blowout, here’s where to join the festivities across the state.
Every year, as September rolls around, there’s a hint of nostalgia in the air as summer fades. The sun gradually sets earlier each night, and temperatures cool as summer’s frenetic energy begins to ease. Seattle and communities across the Evergreen State still have plenty in store for the rest of the year, though, starting with…
Seattle Rock Band Stereo Embers Rekindles for One Night
After four years apart, the quartet reunites for a hometown show.
Bands break up, dissolve, or otherwise drift apart all the time, for all sorts of reasons. No matter what the impetus for the split, though, fans will naturally conjure images of scorched-earth implosions like Fleetwood Mac or Oasis—and optimists will note that even those two bands eventually reunited. In the case of Stereo Embers, their…
2026 Fall Arts Hit List—Visual Arts
The must-see gallery shows of the season.
September The 2026 Recology King County AIR Program Exhibition Through September 12 Recology King County To wrap up its latest artist residencies, Recology King County presents the 2026 Recology King County AIR Program Exhibition, featuring fashion designer Janelle Abbott and photographer Eirik Johnson. Held at Mutuus Studio, the show is the culmination of a residency…
2026 Fall Arts Hit List—Dance and Theater
The must-see dance debuts and theatrical performances of the season.
September Dance Whim W’Him: FALL ’26 September 12–20, Erickson Theatre Off-Broadway and Vashon Center for the Arts One of contemporary dance company Whim W’Him’s most popular programs, the Choreographic Shindig puts the power of curation into the dancers’ hands. For the FALL ’26 show, they chose three female choreographers—Kayla Farrish, Annie Rigney, and Jessi Stegall—to…
Studio Sessions: Ling Chun
The Seattle-based artist brings playful color to ceramics and neon while exploring memory, transformation, and life between cultures.
For Ling Chun, creating begins with something sensed before it can be named. Working with clay, glass, light, and sometimes synthetic hair, the Hong Kong-born artist gives physical form to things that words cannot always hold. “For me, the magnitude of making goes far beyond the object that is eventually produced,” Chun says. “The object…
The Magic of PAX Is Stronger Than Ever
PAX West draws more than 100,000 people to Seattle each year. Co-founder Jerry Holkins reflects on what the gaming convention set out to change, how its community has grown and why gathering face to face still matters.
Access to game news as it was happening was difficult back in the day. Even with the advent of the internet, communication between game publishers and journalists was still a very elite affair. I used to fake credentials—via fax machine!—to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo, mostly just known as E3. It was simultaneously as loud…
Your Guide to Bumbershoot 2026
Navigate Seattle’s wildest end-of-summer weekend with 20 picks spanning Death Cab for Cutie, Blood Orange, wrestling, skateboarding and—obviously—movies made in 48 hours.
Four years after Bumbershoot returned with its quirkiness revivified, Seattleites broadly acknowledge the two-day multimedia extravaganza as a welcome finale to the summer festival season. Fests like Bumbershoot are designed around a choose-your-own-adventure model, but if you’re the kind of person who looked at this year’s sprawling lineup—featuring multiple bands, artists, and exhibits happening at…
Studio Sessions: Gabi Nirino
Working with textiles to explore ideas connected to nature, community, and womanhood, Buenos Aires-born Gabi Nirino never stops experimenting with her medium.
Gabi Nirino carries bag of materials with her almost everywhere she goes. Cloth, thread, yarn, textile scraps, collected fibers—the pieces inside are a network of inspiration waiting for her hands. “You can work with textiles anywhere—on the floor, on a plane—which is why I always carry a project in my bag,” Nirino says. “It’s like…
The 2026 Washington State Book Award Finalists Are Here
Your fall reading list just got 41 books longer.
The 2026 Washington State Book Award finalists are in, and readers may want to clear some space on the nightstand. Judges selected 41 titles from 308 books written by Washington authors and published in 2025. The finalists span fiction, memoir, nonfiction, poetry, picture books, books for young readers, and young adult literature. Seattle is well…
Giving Black Artists Their Flowers
Now in its fifth year, Black & Loud Fest is building community, expanding the region’s sound, and making sure recognition doesn’t come too late.
Categorically, throughout the entire history of music and American culture, Black artists have not received the love and credit they deserve. When recognition does come, it is not until decades after their passing. From Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Seattle’s Tina Bell to contemporary pioneers like Fishbone, Black-fronted bands in the Pacific Northwest and beyond have…
Studio Sessions: Periko The Artist
The Mexican-born, Seattle-based artist paints vibrant figures that refuse to settle into fixed identities.
Can a painting ever contain an entire person? The works of Gerardo Peña, also known as Periko The Artist, leave room for their subjects to move and change, resisting the idea that any of us can be reduced to a single image or expression. Peña’s colorful, surreal figures capture something less fixed than a likeness,…
When Art and Tech Align
Xispa brings artists and technologists together in South Lake Union for residencies, experiments, and unexpected collaborations.
Discover xispa, Seattle’s new art and tech innovation lab in South Lake Union blending the PNW arts community with the city’s tech workforce. Step inside.
Let Him Cook: Matt Broussard’s Rise From Restaurant Chef to Social Media Star
With a forthcoming cookbook and a Capitol Hill restaurant, the Seattle chef is taking his laid-back approach beyond the screen.
Matt Broussard doesn’t know how to describe his food. The chef’s forthcoming cookbook, Now We’re Cooking, has everything from his grandma’s dolmades—grape leaves stuffed with lamb and rice cooked in duck fat—to cantaloupe gazpacho and seared tuna steaks coated in fennel furikake. It’s a culinary hodgepodge that defies categorization, but Broussard defies categorization himself. “I…
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