Artist Matthew Offenbacher has chosen an unusual gallery for a painting exhibition in his neighborhood spanning Capitol Hill and Eastlake set to open this weekend.

“It really was calling to me. It’s very much like a lot of spaces the city has been sweeping encampments from,” Offenbacher says of the liminal space of the I-5 Colonnade, the sloping, 7.5 acre park beneath the echoing freeway.

Offenbacher’s Charms exhibition includes seven paintings mounted on columns that support the elevated freeway between Capitol Hill and Eastlake.

“I made these paintings using aluminum foil, holographic film and glitter, and am thinking of them as protection charms for the city,” Offenbacher writes about the showing.

A visual artists who has been creating and organizing in Seattle for more than a decade, Offenbacher said the new show is a return to creating inspired by the 2020 protests, the Seattle police and prison abolitionist groups Defend the Defund, and the Seattle Solidarity Budget.

“I took a big step back and reevaluated my role as an artist,” Offenbacher said. “This show is a first attempt at how to bring these things together.”

Organizing art in Seattle’s parks is a surprisingly streamlined undertaking, Offenbacher says. But roping in the Washington State Department of Transportation to show the works on the freeway columns added a much deeper level of bureaucracy.

As for funding, Offenbacher says the project is very much a DIY effort.

With the show permitted and ready for its debut this weekend and run through mid-November, Offenbacher is ready to see how people respond to his paintings — and what happens next.

“I hope people will enjoy the work and respect it,” Offenbacher said. “There’s some part of this that is thinking about these objects we make as artist ultimately their purpose is bringing people together. I’m not super interested in creating objects that end up really valuable.”

The artist also hopes the showing will inspire thought about displacement “and dispossession of land that Seattle was founded on and continues today.”

“Many of our structures protect some people by making other people less safe,” the artist writes. “May we have the strength and wisdom to reject our investments in harmful structures that provide an illusion of safety and build new forms of safety for and with each other.”

Offenbacher will be at the Colonnade from 10 AM to noon Sunday for the exhibition’s debut for “anyone who wants to come by and take a look and talk about it.”

Matthew Offenbacher’s Charms runs October 20th to November 16th in the I-5 Colonnade at 1701 Lakeview Blvd E. Learn more here.

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