You're Invited: Celebrate South Seattle College's New Mural
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026 | 1:00 –3:00 p.m. | Olympic Hall Courtyard, SW exterior side RSB | 6000 16th Ave SW, Seattle Free and open to everyone. Music, refreshments, and traditional birria from Jalisco, Mexico.
Something beautiful has been growing on the wall of the Robert Smith Building at South Seattle College, and on June 3rd, we're inviting the community to celebrate it with us.
Join us for the unveiling of our second annual mural project: a sweeping, luminous vision of the Pacific Northwest forest designed by Seattle artist Tori Shao and brought to life by South Seattle College ART204 Mural Painting students, faculty, staff, and West Seattle neighbors who showed up, paintbrush in hand, to be part of something meaningful and lasting.
This is your celebration, too. Come as you are. Bring your people.
What You'll See
Tori's mural draws you into a lush, temperate understory. Take in the western red cedar, Douglas fir, and bigleaf maple reaching toward a canopy alive with filtered light. In the foreground, native plants are rendered in vivid detail: salmonberry, sword fern, salal, trillium, red huckleberry. And at the center of it all, a nurse log blanketed in moss and licorice fern, with young western hemlock saplings pushing up from it toward the sky.
It's a scene you might find on a trail through the Cascades. It's also a portrait of what a college can be.
The nurse log is the mural's heart and its metaphor: just as a fallen tree becomes a foundation for new life; feeding, sheltering, and sustaining what grows from it; a college community provides the support, resources, and knowledge that help students take their next step. The log doesn't stand upright to do this. It gives itself over to the process. It trusts that what grows from it is worth it.
Tori Shao is a Seattle-based muralist, illustrator, and landscape architect whose work explores the connections between people, place, ecology, and story. Raised here in the Pacific Northwest, she draws from the layered histories, native flora, and diverse ecosystems of Washington state to create immersive public art that makes people feel welcomed, seen, and rooted.
How This Mural Came to Be
A mural like this doesn't simply appear on a wall. It grows there, slowly, from a community that chooses to make something together.
Full-time art faculty Scott Méxcal anchored the project from the start. Twice a week, his ART204 students gathered not in a classroom but in front of the wall itself, learning large-scale grid methods, color application, and finish work by doing the real thing. Beyond class hours, Scott organized community paint days, opening the project to South Seattle College staff and students and West Seattle neighbors who wanted to leave something of themselves on this wall.
A lot of people showed up.
The Art Gallery Committee: Eileen Jimenez, Stephanie Hankinson, Scott Méxcal, Amiko Matsuo, and Sharon Arnold met weekly throughout the project, reviewing proposals, walking the site, raising awareness, and keeping the vision on track. USA Student Government President, Judas Iscariot, and the USA Student Leadership unanimously championed the project and advocated for the ongoing visibility of both the mural initiative and the art gallery on campus. College leadership, staff, and faculty engaged with the process from beginning to end.
What you'll see on that wall on June 3rd is the sum of all of it. Every brushstroke, every community paint day, every meeting, every person who took the time to take part.
Join Us
South Seattle College Mural Celebration Wednesday, June 3, 2026, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Olympic Hall Courtyard South Seattle College | 6000 16th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98106
Free and open to the public.
Music and refreshments provided, including traditional birria from Jalisco, Mexico.
Sponsored by the Division for Access, Community & Opportunity.
Come see the mural. Come meet the artists and students who made it. Come be part of the community that calls this place home.
Mural design, art, and story by Tori Shao. Painting of the mural was completed by South Seattle College ART204 Mural Painting students and community, led by art faculty Scott Méxcal.