Thanks to Seattle artist Billy King for organizing a drive to fill a new north Seattle homeless shelter with art. A decent one story structure, built as a nursing home with about 62 rooms, The Oaks at Forest Bay is soon to be housing as many people struggling with homelessness and much in need of a roof over their heads. As I dropped off my donation, I talked to Grace who will be one of the people running the facility, and she explained that it was a joint partnership between the city of Shoreline and King County.

This piece I did is from the summer of 2015, an early painting on glass for me when I was using a lot of plants from my garden as subject matter for a decorative series I called ‘Kitchen Paintings’. I was pretty happy with a lot of the passages in this piece but it never garnered much attention or interest. Still I think that it will be a good choice for brightening some of the many rooms at ‘The Oaks’.

The name of the facility gave me a smile since I saw no oaks and certainly saw no bay. In fact this building sits in front of a narrow parking lot looking out onto six busy lanes of Highway 99. That said, this is a quiet courtyard behind that might even become a sculpture garden someday according to Billy King. Apparently there had been some neighborhood opposition to the conversion of the site to the new use. But once you see the place the only response I can imagine that if a facility like this can’t be repurposed for this critical community need, I don’t know where else these people would suggest.

Here’s to more facilities like this, the need is desperate and won’t be going away anytime soon.