2026 artist lineup

179 [Angelina Villalobos]

Drawing inspiration from her upbringing as a Xicana in the Pacific Northwest, 179 blends elements of graffiti, anime, and fairytales to create murals that bring life and meaning to the spaces they inhabit. The goal is to design safe and beautiful spaces for community members that foster mindfulness and meaningful connections.

Actualize AiR // Social Contract

“A social contract is an unwritten agreement where people give up some of their absolute freedom and obey laws in exchange for safety, order, and protection from a government or community.” Featuring artists from opposite sides of the continental United States and curated by Tommy Gregory, Social Contract brings together a wide range of mediums centered around a pointed critique of the recent and current conditions of our flawed government.

Adrian Pacheco

Working at the intersection of paint and pixel, Latino artist and designer Adrian Pacheco builds vibrant acrylic paintings that extend beyond the wall into augmented reality. Each piece is activated with AR—motion, sound, and dimension unlocked through a phone screen or headset—creating a layered, immersive experience that positions the City of Seattle as the canvas.

Ann Marie Schneider // Horsetail Sporelings [Prehistoric Megaflora Disperses]

This year, sporelings of prehistoric giant horsetail (Equisetum spp.) will guide you along your WALKDONTRUN journey with the artwork. 350 million years ago, Equisetum's ancestors towered up to 90 feet, sequestering carbon into the swamp forests that became coal — the same coal we now burn as fuel, returning the carbon to the atmosphere. An ancient survivor, it thrives in Seattle’s urban ground, still guiding us.

Aurora Flux // Clown Oracle Reader

Benjamin Talmage/Electric Lines Design // Final Form

What once was becomes a representation of its past form. Fossils became petroleum, petroleum became plastic, plastic was used, discarded, salvaged, and became fossil-shaped. How many millions of years will it take to reach the next fossil reincarnation? Benjamin Talmage works at the intersection of design, fabrication, repair, and integration, building one-of-a-kind solutions and interactive art pieces. His latest installation traces a material's journey through deep time: fossils became petroleum, petroleum became plastic, and plastic — used, discarded, salvaged — becomes fossil-shaped once more. The piece asks: how many millions of years until the next reincarnation?

Claudia Villalobos [Seattle Paint Party] // “Draw your Walk Face!”

Claudia Villalobos is a Seattle-based artist and teaching artist whose practice centers on creativity, connection, and community. She is the founder of Seattle Paint Party, a mobile art studio that brings engaging art experiences to private and corporate clients through workshops, team-building events, and art activations.

Coco Spadoni // Bloom & See Through

Seattle-based painter, ceramicist, illustrator, and muralist Coco Spadoni creates bold, colorful, abstract works for contemporary interiors. Drawing from ritual, dream states, and queer theory, their practice results in visually immersive pieces that balance organic form with conceptual depth.

Corbie Leiker // Squish me, Squeeze me, Give me Attention!

Corbie Leiker's textile installations encourage participants to let go of inhibitions and engage with their senses in a playful hands on way. Through simple games and a series of prompts, community is invited to physically interact with the textile art and the other humans around them. The hope is to bring people together through imaginative and playful shared experiences bridged through textile art.

Dahyun Kim // Dummy

Dummy is a sculpture series that solely uses objects the artist found at the time of its making.

Dani Tirrell

Daniel Woolhiser // Mixed Signals

Interdisciplinary designer Daniel Woolhiser's installation reinterprets the function of city signage, reimagining use and form, capturing the silent visual chaos of navigating the city, as well as the everyday redundancy and disruption of signage. The fictional, speculative series of signs is based around the objects of wayfinding in the city, creating a moment of wonder and visual disruption of the everyday ordinary.

Dez'Mon Omega Fair // Eon Ephemere VI

An interdisciplinary artist and poet working across immersive installation, novel sonic poetry, and participatory performance, Dez'Mon Omega Fair's "Eon Ephemere VI" is a meditation on the present moment — the breath, the heartbeat, the elements. Viewers are invited to touch, to close their eyes and listen inwardly, to wait for what surfaces and notice what disappears.

dj100proof - Backyard BBQ: Summer Sendoff
A Celebration of Twenty Summers

dj100proof and friends celebrate 20 years of the Backyard BBQ mix series with Backyard BBQ: Summer Sendoff, a soundtrack to the end of summer featuring songs from and inspired by the iconic annual mix series. Join in at the WALKDONTRUN finish line at Occidental Square for an afternoon of soulful selections, warm grooves, and community.

DJ knosubz

DJ, music producer, and curator, Knosubz delivers a powerful blend of fast-paced, dynamic energy through an eclectic mix of Club, Juke, House, and Techno, honoring and preserving the soul of Black dance music.

Doodle Girls Face Art // Paint the People

Elizabeth Calvillo Dueñas // Amuletos/ You Deserve Better

Erica Badgeley // Tug

Nature lover and PNW backwoods barefoot ballet-b-girl Erica Badgeley searches for answers big and small through the art of dance. The plant growing up through the crack in the sidewalk. The patch of bare earth in the dense cityscape. The small seed planted with a hopeful heart. Wilderness, wildness. Can we contain her, or does she contain us?

Francesca Lohmann & Isvald Klingels

Blossoming in the midst of Seattle's downtown concrete jungle is a deep friendship/collaboration between a sculptor/taffy artist, Francesca Lohmann, and a local floral designer and co-owner of Marigold & Mint, Isvald Klingels. The duo will bring their magic together to transform a secret garden tucked away between downtown buildings.

Future Arts

Heap Troupe

Heap Troupe maps the space taken by car culture in the landscapes of cities and the psyches of its citizens through activation of a four-way crosswalk.

HeZza FeZza

Embodying a mythical siren, HeZza FeZza blends live vocals, synths, and electronic samples into an immersive soundscape. This transportive experience honors the indigeneity of the Salish Sea while showcasing HeZza's signature hooks—an open invitation for everyone to join the magic of the moment.

Inconvenience Store

Jackie Miedema

Jesse Higman

Jo Cosme // Rejas del Hogar / The Shape of Home

Boricua multimedia artist Jo Cosme peels back the postcard image of Puerto Rico to reveal the realities of colonialism, displacement, and resistance. Drawing from her lived experience after Hurricane María, she creates immersive installations that transform the visual language of tourism into spaces for memory, cultural survival, and conversations about land, identity, and liberation.

Just Little Guys [Alyssa Johnson]

Alyssa Johnson creates tiny joy catalysts: handmade clay "best friends" born from a love of personifying everyday things. In hard times, they aim to bring the light, the giggles, and the joy we need most. These little guys aren't about being cool or fitting in. They're proudly made by a freak, for freaks. Learn how to sculpt your own googly-eyed hammering man!

Kinesis Project Seattle // Bridge Matter/The Reach

Kinesis Project draws a parallel between our human ways of bridging "cracks" and the Earth's own geological processes in "Bridge Matter/The Reach," a colorful, meditative dance piece that marks the group's second collaboration with geologist Dr. Missy Eppes and her colleagues. Performances by Hendri Walujo, Kimberly Holloway, Margaret Behm, Prasti Purdum, Kara Beadle; Music in the moment by Neil Welch (Sax), Natalie Twigg (Oboe), Jameson Bratcher (Trombone); Costumes by Rebecca Kanach, Visual Art design by Celeste Cooning.

Ling Chun // Cascade of Light

Inspired by the disappearing neon landscape of Hong Kong, Ling Chun creates ceramic vessels that preserve fragments of home while glowing neon traces speak to nostalgia, loss, and the experience of living between cultures as an immigrant in America. Through the tension of permanence and fragility, Ling’s work sparks an ongoing conversation about identity, visibility, and the ways material can express what words cannot.

Malia Peoples // The Kapa Table: Hawaiian Barkcloth Making, Printmaking & Storytelling

Teaching artist Malia Peoples invites attendees to experience the Hawaiian barkcloth tradition of Kapa through live demonstrations, and learn about Hawaiian history, botany, and art. Create your own stamped artwork using designs inspired by traditional patterns and endangered Hawaiian plants and animals.

Marshall Law Band

Seattle's own Marshall Law Band blends dynamic vocal delivery, spirited guitar riffs, and rich keyboard textures into rhythmic, soulful stories. Rather than stick to one genre, the band embraces musical freedom, crafting songs that connect with fans from all walks of life.

Mary Anne Carter & Wishbone Industrial Arts

Megan Prince // Jean Bodies Engagement

Jean Body Engagements asks community to collaboratively create biomorphic sculptures, utilizing recycled denim jeans and pre-made hand-knit materials to build a form that can only exist because they showed up. The resulting sculpture is both portrait and declaration: this community, made tangible.

Michael Compton

Michelle Elzinga

From local clubs to busking throughout the city, singer-songwriter Michael Compton’s hopeful brand of indie rock inspires personal connection through thoughtful storytelling and soothingly vibrant sounds.

MS+A // Immergence

Naby Camara Band

Naphtali Gunther Dance // Interweaving

A quintet of contemporary dancers, interacting with and responding to the location, each other, and the music. The context for the choreography comes from wanting to dance and make art with friends.

Neon Brass Party

Neon Brass Party is a street band built on a simple belief: individuality is worth celebrating, and it's better celebrated together. Drawing inspiration from Latin, funk, hip-hop, and beyond, the group gets people moving and amplifies joy one show at a time.

Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone // Persistence of Dispersed Worlds

Persistence of Dispersed Worlds uses improvisation to reject the disciplinary ordering of urban landscapes, and the ways that built forms direct and control the body. Instead, it treats the urban landscape as a playground, in which new spatial patterns generate unexpected interactions.

Nikki Solemsaas // Pacific Light

Multidisciplinary artist Nikki Solemsaas has one goal: to create beautiful things so people can feel beautiful things. Whether creating a mural that transforms a public space, building a brand from scratch, designing a website, or painting for a gallery, the artist asks: How can I create something that makes people stop, feel, and remember it?

Pak & The Lolos feat. Totem Star

Fusing island soul and high-voltage rock, Pak & The Lolos create an uplifting live experience rooted in stories of home and belonging. Live performances blur the line between concert and community gathering, inviting audiences to sing, move, and connect. This special set features performers from Totem Star, spotlighting some of Seattle's most exciting emerging artists.

Parmida Ziaei // Shreds of Home // Pieces of Me

Inspired by Persian calligraphy and Fereydoun Moshiri's "A Tear in History," a poem mourning the loss of humanity, multidisciplinary artist Parmida Ziaei and vocalist Azadeh Zanjani present a three-part performance piece. Through live painting, movement, and sound, fabric becomes both a visual landscape and an extension of the body: carried, manipulated, held, shredded, and finally released.

Phinney Ridge Steel Band

Sharing good music with the world and serving the community with steel pan!

Push Button Performer [Mike Leavitt]

Red Light Brass Band

Combining New Orleans-style grooves with the swagger of the City of Angels, Red Light Brass Band brings authentic hot jazz and Tin Pan Alley tunes to this year's WALKDONTRUN.

Renee Adams // Uncultivated

The sculptural forms in Uncultivated focus on lesser-appreciated plant species that crop up in our lawns, colonize empty lots, and sprout where most other plants cannot gain a foothold. Weeds are the most resilient and adaptable plants on our planet, though their ability to thrive and cross borders has vilified them. Many parallels can be drawn between human perceptions of these scrappy flora and the so-called "undesirable" humans that crop up in today's polarizing debates. This series aims to shed light on these contemporary social issues through a botanical lens.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet

Under the leadership of Music Director Xian Zhang, the Seattle Symphony unleashes the power of music, brings people together, and lifts the human spirit.

Sharon Gottula // The Count

Multidisciplinary artist Sharon Gottula's The Count is a dispersed installation of pit-fired ceramic monarch cocoons, hung from trees, posts, and urban structures along the route. Each is tagged with a number, posing a simple question: how many are left? The work is meant to be discovered one cocoon at a time.

Shaun Crawford & The Reasons

Stef Richmond and Cherub and the Multitude // Homebodies: Slow Street Edition

Stef Richmond and Cherub and the Multitude's movement meditation blurs the line between performance, ritual, and collective healing practice. Through a layered combination of spoken word and text, a live DJ soundscape, and guided movement, audiences are invited into a shared experience of slowness, presence, and embodiment. Rooted in care, reflection, and communal energy/shamanic practices, Homebodies offers space to pause, breathe, and inhabit the body as a site of memory, wisdom, and transformation.

Tara Tamaribuchi

Tara Tamaribuchi enters art-making from a Buddhist and diasporic perspective, working across mediums to investigate the human life experience in an organic, unfolding art practice. Spanning spatial installation, public art, sound, video, and social practice, she layers visual and material elements that draw equally from ancestral traditions and everyday life.

Tarrang Art [ Charmi Shah ] // Pieces of Seattle

Set along the WALKDONTRUN route, "Pieces of Seattle" is a collage installation by mixed media artist Charmi Shah (Tarrang Art) consisting of mini collectible collage cards that combine materials found on Seattle streets with pieces of Shah's own painted paper. Participants are invited to collect these small collaged pieces and join a make-your-own-collage session at the finish line.

The Bad Things

Seattle's "junkyard cabaret" band mixes drunken waltzes, mournful sea shanties, degenerate folk with punk energy, and New Orleans-style horns and banjo to create a raucous and theatrical sound. Built for boozy dive-bar nights and burlesque performances and drawing influences from pub folk, street punk, and old-time roots music, The Bad Things have built a devoted cult following, known as much for their chaotic live energy as their genre-blending songwriting.

the monarq: Galaxy Photos [Sabella Flagg]

Choose a "galaxy" from the book, and Galaxy Photos will build an instant photo experience around you: a swirl of color and motion captured in a single exposure, a work of art created in real time. What you walk away with is a one-of-a-kind, light-painted Polaroid portrait—proof that for one frame, you were standing at the center of your own galaxy.

The Mothership Photography Collective // Tender Care

The Mothership Photography Collective engages the combined power of mothers working in the fine art photography space. Changed by late nights, small hands, and the particular attention that caregiving demands, the collective presents a vision of a world radicalized by the act of tender care for others. Tenderness, not softness, is a force capable of reordering what we value and how we see, and is something worth unpacking, together.

SEATTLE CREATES

The Seattle Project [Amanda Morgan] // “Walking Solo”: A Journey Through the City

The Seattle Project presents "Walking Solo": A Journey Through the City, a movement responsive work that centers on the myth of the Hero’s Journey. Myths are found in everyday people and moments; can you find them as you follow the dancers through the city?

Tory Franklin

Designed to be navigated, woven through, and tucked around the site's existing features, Tory Franklin's Anklebiter invites the public to become its co-creators—reassembling and reshaping 46 interlocking snake segments throughout WALKDONTRUN so that the work is never fixed, always in motion.

Undercurrent

Undercurrent is a teaching and performance entity built around a singular devotion: nuanced floor work research, practiced with seamless continuity and an eye for the thrill of kinesthesia. Under the direction of Hilary Grumman and Alethea Alexander, performers fall, roll, spiral, and surrender together—creating a language of movement that's precious, vital, and communal.

Via Vinson-Jacobs // Somatic Hopscotch and Meet a Street Tree

"In Somatic Hopscotch, performance artist Via Vinson-Jacobs takes the public space - the sidewalk - as an open invitation to leap, bounce, and notice the world around you. In Meet a Street Tree, The downtown trees are a public forest, evolved to intertwine their roots, but they each live in their own separate boxes. Sound familiar? Come build your own relationship with them in Meet a Street Tree. Sound familiar? Come build your own relationship with them.

victor yanez-lazcano & UW TAPS cohort [Heejin Kim, Kamari Carrol, Anna Kuzyshyn]

Vis-à-Vis Society

Wasabi Samba

Seattle's own Wasabi Samba brings an infectious blend of Latin rock, jazz, and and soul to the streets of the Emerald City for WALKDONTRUN, perfectly matching the vibrant pulse of downtown's ultimate art marathon.

Zoey Stein // Talk to Me

Fascinated by the idea of how art and technology communicate with each other, Zoe Stein uses TouchDesigner to translate the raw pitch, volume, rhythm, texture of human voices—into visuals generated in real time. Her work has no fixed image. It only exists once someone is willing to make a sound. Your voice becomes the brush.