If you haven’t attended the long-running arts extravaganza in a few years, the scene at Seattle Center might surprise you. After imploding under the weight of becoming a run-of-the-mill mega-star music festival, Bumbershoot has returned to its 1970s roots as a decidedly quirky and welcoming affair.
Art x NW (formerly ArtSEA) is a weekly arts and culture newsletter from Cascade PBS. Read past issues and subscribe for more.
That’s thanks to a programming reboot by local arts coalition New Rising Sun, which took over Bumbershoot while the fest was on hiatus from 2020-2022. (The group also runs the gigantic new Cannonball Arts venue in the former Bed Bath & Beyond downtown.)
Now in addition to musical acts such as Digable Planets, Weezer, Janelle Monae and The Murder City Devils, you’ll encounter aerialists and acrobats, roving dancers, an Indigenous fashion show, a witch temple inside a geodome, skateboarding demos, the Seattle Cheer squad, a wig farm (harvest and try one on!) and an extremely popular cat circus — though good luck getting into that last one.
One of my surprise new favorite additions since Bumbershoot’s 2023 makeover is the Bumbermania wrestling ring (near MoPOP), courtesy of SOS Pro Wrestling in Tacoma. In this hilarious, no-holds-barred show, wrestlers compete as monkeys, pirates and a few famous tech executives while the very funny announcers ensure the crowd goes wild.
This year’s visual arts show (housed in the A/NT Gallery near the International Fountain) comes courtesy of Vanishing Seattle, which documents lost and endangered icons of the city. Founder Cynthia Brothers has curated a group show called My City’s Filthy — in the good sense! — featuring 120 works by 60+ local artists sharing takes on a Seattle that’s slipping away.
Among the rich mix of painting, photography, sculpture, video and pop-ups are works by Damon Brown, Monyee Chau, Mary Anne Carter, Louie Gong, Taha Ebrahimi, Eirik Johnson and Kelly O. With artful takes on the Elephant Car Wash sign, the OK Hotel, Chubby & Tubby, the Virginia Inn (saved for now!) and many other institutions, the show is bound to cause rolling waves of nostalgia and I’ll be there surfing the seas of Seattle yore.
Last year’s visual arts show at Bumbershoot is where I first experienced Io Palmer’s work i

n person. At the 2024 event, the Pullman artist covered one wall of the Fisher Pavilion with 30 ceramic bundles that seemed to sing out in shiny glazes. I was drawn to the vibrant colors and textures of her installation, Plush, and also to the untamed quality of the piece.
Arranged in five horizontal lines reminiscent of a music staff, the individual bouquets of clay seemed to immediately refute that structure — gesturing to each other and reaching across the lines with wild and sproingy tendrils. Some of the bundles looked ready to jump to the next line, others happy to shimmy and shimmer in their own zone.
I wanted to know more about this unruly abstract foliage, so this past March, the Art by Northwest crew and I traveled to Pullman for a studio visit with Palmer (whose first name is short for Iolanda). The result is Episode 3 of Season 2, which comes out today.
We arrived during spring break at Washington State University, where Palmer is a professor of art, so we had the art building mostly to ourselves. Which turned out to be a good thing, as an elevator under repair made for an amusingly lengthy trek up and down the halls with our loads of gear.
In the studio, Palmer explained her process behind her “thickets” and “hedgerows,” which involves creating hundreds of individual clay components (rings, petals, sticks and dumpling shapes) and glazing them in bold colors that shine like nail polish. Once she has these small pieces, she contemplates her wall composition, incorporating laser-cut sheets of colored plexiglass and improvising the phrasing like a jazz musician.
“I’m trying to give form to something ephemeral,” Palmer explained. “The installations are about honoring unseen paths, tangled growth … They trace the winding, wild and often uncomfortable journeys of people of color and offer a space that honors the arrival, the joy and the recognition.”
Having grown up in Greece (with parents who loved painting, sculpture and jazz), Palmer moved to Western Pennsylvania and now lives in Eastern Washington — all “predominantly white spaces,” she noted. In response, this foray into clay is about crossing borders and creating new places, welcoming and celebratory, that invite people inside a boundless embrace.
I also attended the recent opening of Palmer’s show Meander at the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher Building in Bellingham (through Jan. 25, 2026), her largest hedgerow to date at 35 feet long. Standing before the buzzy crowd, she shared her thanks and said of the glossy and rebellious bundles spanning the wall: “It’s my quiet way of speaking truth to power.” Watch the full episode.
Catching up on Season 2 of Art by Northwest? Check out our profiles of Yup’ik mask carver Jennifer Angaiak Wood and Orcas Island printmaker Eduardo Fausti.
If you aren’t interested in braving Bumbershoot, there are plenty of other Northwest places to enjoy outdoor music in these last days of summer.
< Legendary band Chicago is playing the Chateau Ste. Michelle outdoor concert series (Aug. 29-30). I’m gonna recommend going Saturday in the Park.
< Dave Matthews Band is doing its customary multiday stint at the Gorge Amphitheater in George … lawn seats are still available but don’t Crash Into Me. (Aug. 29-31).
< The North Cascades Bluegrass Fest (Aug. 30-31) brings pickin’ and grinnin’ and a yodeling workshop (!) to the Deming Logging Show Showgrounds in Bellingham.
< Marymoor Park in Redmond is going insane in the membrane with Cypress Hill and Suicidal Tendencies (Aug. 31).
< The Encanto Music Festival (Aug. 31) floods the Seattle Waterfront’s Pier 62 with mariachi, bolero and orchestral music, plus dance from Bailadores de Bronce.
< And Philadelphia-based indie-pop band Japanese Breakfast closes the Woodland Park ZooTunes series (Sept. 2 show sold out; Sept. 3 available).
Looking for more regional arts coverage? Check out Art by Northwest, a new television series on Cascade PBS featuring artists from all over Washington. Season 2 episodes are releasing weekly from August 7 through October 2.