2021 Utility Box Artists

2021 Utility Box Art

“My art/writing practice helps me cope with difficult things personally, but it’s also a crucial communication strategy—one that makes room for more than our usual ways of saying things can allow. Art lets me express joined realities without either dominating, lets differences add to rather than negate each other. I’m inspired by ordinary objects meaning two things at once—post-its, ephemeral/disposable yet saving something you’ll forget, and band-aids, visually signaling healing + woundedness. I often see my art this way—simultaneous embodiment of hurt/worry and healing/soothing. I’ve always worked across multiple persistent styles of art concurrently—they’re deeply intertwined, despite sometimes looking like separate careers made by separate individuals.” ~ Clare Johnson

Hoa’s painting style defines the thin line between abstraction and realism using a mixture of sharp and broken details. Her colors and brushstrokes suggest a contrast between clarity and ambiguity of a human figure to evoke the question “Can you ever truly know a person?”, which is something she often asks herself while painting and observing her subjects.”

“The work I create is a visual response to current events happening in society. These art pieces will also carry themes of inspiration of Chicanx culture, and my Mexican Heritage that tie together as brightly colored works. Throughout the years, I’ve accumulated a combination of digital illustrations on procreate and photoshop, painting traditionally on canvas and have found a new love of creating public installation work through murals, traffic box designs and mixed media collages.”   ~ Cecelia “Mousy DeVilla” DeLeon

Cable Griffith’s work reflects our complex relationship to landscape, filtered through the influence of technology and popular culture. His paintings and installations explore a space between actual, virtual, and imagined, borrowing from the history of landscape painting, digital media, and language.

“Working in diverse mediums, the one thing that has been consistent throughout my career is repetition of forms, shapes, colors, and actions. When I am able to find a meditative space where my hand does what the mind wants, everything seems to flow and anxiety and stress disappears. The work flows freely, it’s neither good nor bad, it just is. I hope that the viewer can get lost in the colors, shapes and joyful feelings conveyed in the work.”  ~Jennifer L. Towner

As an artist, I have always wondered what it means to exist—in relationship to the self, to others, and to the spaces and communities that we claim and claim us. My watercolor paintings are my love letters to the stories that exist on the margins and the hyperlocal treasures around us. I craft intentional snapshots of colorful slices of life: a steaming bowl of soup, a home that sits quietly on a corner, a coffee shop filled with good conversation. Blending vibrant swatches of color and complex details, my art combines whimsy and community joy to celebrate small businesses, immigrant placemaking, and food diasporas. With every brush stroke, I hope to celebrate our interconnectedness and refocus our attention on the symbols of community. Because once we do, the mundane becomes the magical.  ~Sophia Fang

Wildlife inspires me. I enjoy how “Tukwila” comes from the Duwamish people’s name for hazelnut forests local to the area. Hazelnut and big-leaf maple trees, silver-haired bats, and pileated woodpeckers abide in Tukwila (please see pictures).  Our voices and choices matter to all creatures nestled in this temperate rainforest ecosystem, in this territory of Coast Salish indigenous peoples.   I have a passion for creating publicly accessible art that seeks to evoke people’s artistic nature. My direction is to give a diversity of people a feeling of rootedness in nature.

Elizabeth Gahan uses art to create unexpected and memorable visual experiences in public places that people can encounter during their daily routines. These colorful interventions enhance the character of each location and draw attention to our natural and built environments, encouraging viewers to see their surroundings in a new way.

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Elizabeth Gahan’s artwork considers the intersection of nature and the built environment. Her art combines geometric and organic forms inspired by our everyday surroundings, and then uses saturated colors and eye-catching patterns to stylize and enhance the visual experience.

Taylor Yingshi is a creator exploring the preservation of heritage through visual storytelling and museum-based programming. Her artwork has been nationally recognized by the Congressional Institute, the YoungArts Foundation, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Currently residing in Washington, she spends her free time exploring the Wing Luke Museum’s archives and reading Murakami novels.

I am a digital artist exploring concepts of time, vulnerability, and human experience. My work is literally born from practice; it is my habit to create every day, capturing inspiration and emotion through space and time. Each piece of my art is both a page from my secret diary and a time capsule illuminating life at a given point.