Raise your hand if you know that Rainier Beach has the highest count of public art installations and counting, compared to most other neighborhoods in the Greater Seattle Area. If you have had a chance to check out the Rainier Beach Report Card 2017 we received an A for Arts and Culture! And for your even deeper information, A Beautiful Safe Place Action Area in our RB Neighborhood Plan calls out the interconnectivity of Arts and Safety as a community building and economic influencer for our neighborhood, awesome right?! You may have experienced this theory exemplified if you attended the RB Arts and Music Festival this weekend.

We and many other partners/stakeholders in RB work diligently to create, coordinate, support and lead arts and safety efforts here, but there is a Vigilante Artist in Rainier Beach that dares to create place and sense of community solo dolo. What’s up with that!?

If you have been at the stop light at Rainier & Henderson, you may have glanced at a wooden light poll and read “love”, “Smile” or seen an elective arrangement of recycled pieces of glass, paint and ply wood mounted and on display. This both welcomes and thanks you for sliding through RB. I mean this is the center of our Neighborhood, so it makes sense, right?

Or you may have stood at the cross walk, heading into Rainier Beach International Baccalaureate High School, and been gifted a bouquet of flowers that seemed to have bloomed from an impermeable base, rather a light pole. This light pole at the center of Education, Affordable Housing, Open Space and Pedestrian Safety is elevated by a multicolored display of blooming and blossoming flowers. they dare not fade and are fearless in their precarious yet obvious position. Why aren’t there real planters there anyway!?

So, I have no ask, there is no invitation to join a committee, attend a meeting or conference call. This note goes out to the Vigilante Artist to say I SEE YOU! And thank you for sharing your feelings with us and stepping into these spaces that I see as Beauty Marks in our neighborhood as a Special Arts Ops Secret Agent of Change, it has not gone unnoticed.