Marine Mosaic

Erika is a Bremerton, WA based textile artist working with katazome, a traditional rice paste-based resist printing method.

Being a 1.5 generation Japanese American with a Japanese mother and yonsei father, they have very deep roots set both in the US and Japan. Much of what inspires them comes from their background as a bicultural person, along with the unique natural beauty of this region.

Find more from Erika at erikaharada.com or follow her on Instagram @kimagureya_

Seattle-area-based poet Riddhima Das explores themes of connection through nature with her multilingual works (Bengali, Hindi, English). Her poem "Because what else do we have?" won 1st place at the 2023 - 2024 Lake Washington PTSA Reflections Contest and 3rd place at the 2023 - 2024 Washington State PTA Reflections Contest in the Literature category.

Beyond poetry, she has a passion for music that extends to singing, playing instruments, and soaking in the energy of live concerts; she is also an avid sports fan and loves the sport of softball (but gets injured playing it).

“I was born and raised in Ethiopia. In 2017, I was fortunate enough to be the first in my family to come to the US for education. Since then, I have not had the chance to visit my homeland, and my homesickness grows with time. But recently, creating something beautiful on a canvas has been feeling like home - a haven reminiscent of the warmth of my mom and my sister. Painting has taken me on a journey where I have learned to be less of a perfectionist and more of a completion-ist. I used to paint back in high school, but I stopped for years for fear that what I create will be imperfect, unworthy.

However, over the past year, I got back into painting and learned that it is better to create slightly imperfect artworks that are completed instead of perfect artworks that only exist in my head and will never be started, let alone completed. Painting has also been an outlet for me. I was impacted by the mass layoffs in 2023, preventing me from supporting my family financially. At that moment, painting became a refuge for me where I am allowed to exist and create without the need to prove my worth or my presence — a refuge that is absent in today’s capitalist systems and corporate work culture.

I like impressionism. Through this medium, I aspire to explore colors and textures in landscapes and nature. Most of my paintings depict different scenes in Seattle and surrounding areas. Gasworks, Woodland Park Rose Garden, UW, Lake Washington, Lake Union, and my neighborhood in the Central District are among the places that I have depicted in my paintings. I am on Instagram as Halluu Arts by Jorgo (@halluu.arts). Halluu means color in Oromo, my native tongue - yet another way I try to connect to my homeland through my art.”

Alexandria Peña is a Seattle based Mexican-American plein air painter. She also has deeper roots to the area with ancestry in the Quinault Nation. Alex is inspired by the outdoors and the vibrancy of the city.

Often she will be outside painting views from the scenic areas. Some of her inspirations are Frida Khalo, Vincent Van Gough, Claude Monet and Columbus OH based painting teacher Joeseph Lombardo.

Find more from Alexandria on Instagram @AlexandriaPena_thegrape.

“Whether it is on my boat, or being physically in the water, I am at home, in my church, at my spiritual altar as my truest self. At times, the world has a harsh need to change you, and the water can give you a place to keep that safe or force you to face it directly. My hope is that those who have not historically seen themselves in spaces like these can access them with the right resources, safety, and opportunity. Our industry has a huge responsibility in that. Within these healing narratives, joy, liberation, and even purpose can be found too.”

Angela Hewitson, she/her, brings over ten years in the maritime industry, across a variety of roles, including sustainability research, fisheries, boatbuilding, public engagement, education, activism, advocacy, and now… art. Angela brings a special expertise in the connection between maritime and social justice, as a Chicana hailing from Southern California, with experience working in settings ranging from the Southeast Alaska purse seining fleet to community development research off Isle au Haut, Maine.

Most recently, she led public engagement efforts for Northwest Maritime in Port Townsend, working to connect people across communities with transformative maritime experiences. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and the Seattle Propeller Club. In her current role, she aims to deepen connections between the maritime industry, regional partners and underrepresented youth and their communities throughout the Seattle region

You can find more from Angela at www.angelahewitson.com

Rekha Kuver (she/her or they/them) explores generational imagination, grief, love, selfhood, and community.

Her artistic practice is deliberately self-referential as an Indo-Fijian-American reckoning with belonging, even with no “rightful place” ethnically, racially, or nationally. She aspires to highlight community ties that arise from displacement and diaspora.

Kloe Chan is a multidisciplinary artist who is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Art Therapy and Couple Family Therapy at Antioch University. She believes in the healing power of art making and is passionate about connecting with others through art.

Having grown up in New York City, Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively, Kloe uses art to explore the complexity of her multicultural identity. To see more of her work, visit www.kloechan.com.

Warren W. Buck has been painting, for decades, with watercolors as well as acrylics and pastels. He also was a very early developer of underwater painting in oil. He is greatly influenced by Winslow Homer as they both have had similar, but not overlapping, periods of living in the Bahamas painting Impressionist style watercolors. Homer ’s beautiful work was introduced to him by physics professor Nandor Balazs of Stony Brook University, now deceased. Buck, and his partner at the time, sailed their largely motor-less, unrefrigerated Brown Searunner 31 trimaran, Shadowfax, with sparse traditional navigation equipment from Martha’s Vineyard Massachusetts, down the east coast of the US and deep into the unpopulated Bahamas on a continuous three-year voyage from 1980 to 1983; just after a year living in Paris, France.

The originals of the images on display were part of a series of well over 100 paintings that helped fund that three year voyage. Buck is a PhD theoretical physicist who is now Professor Emeritus at UW Bothell. He was the founding Chancellor of UWB and is now the first Chancellor Emeritus of the UW three campuses. Before arriving in the NW, Buck established, among other things, an interna onally known research center at Hampton University (an Historically Black University) that helped to develop the physics program at the US Department of Energy’s electron accelerator Jefferson Lab in Newport News Virginia. He and wife, Cate, have been exploring many parts of the Sound/Salish Sea by auxiliary powered sailboat.

There are prints of Warren’s work available in our gift shop. To purchase the art on display please contact buckstrategies@gmail.com.