The Garry Oak Gallery

Nestled within the Seward Park Audubon Center, the Garry Oak Gallery is a space rooted as deeply in place as it is in purpose—a place where community, art, and conservation converge.

Named for the Garry Oak (Quercus garryana), the only oak species native to Washington, the gallery draws inspiration from one of the region’s rarest and most culturally significant ecosystems. These distinctive trees—gnarled, resilient, and long-lived—once marked the open prairies of what is now south Seattle. Today, Seward Park still protects one of the city’s only remaining groves, a living reminder of landscapes shaped over generations by both natural processes and Indigenous stewardship.

Like the Garry oak itself, the gallery is a place of gathering and exchange. It hosts talks, lectures, and classes that invite curiosity and deepen understanding of the natural world, while also providing a welcoming platform for local artists to share work inspired by it. Here, science meets storytelling, and creative expression becomes another pathway into conservation.

Whether you’re attending a community event, learning something new, or experiencing art that reflects the landscapes just outside our doors, the Garry Oak Gallery offers a space to connect to each other, and to the living systems that sustain us.

Now Showing: 

In the Hand

Artist: Erin Linton
Exhibit: July 8 - September 30 , 2026
Demonstration and Artist Reception: July 25, 1PM-2PM
 

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"In the Hand" is a meditation on what it means to care for something that does not belong to you — and the grace of letting it go.

About the Artist:

Erin M. Linton has spent a lifetime in close company with wild birds—as a child in the Cascade-Siskiyou foothills, as a volunteer wildlife rehabilitator, and as a painter. The works in this exhibition grew from that accumulated intimacy: birds she has held, treated, and watched return to the sky.

Linton works in gouache on reclaimed tea bags, a medium as deliberate as it is distinctive. The layered, muted surfaces of the bags echo the softness of feathers and fur, while her practice of presenting each animal against an abstract, ink-washed ground transforms a species into a subject—an individual rather than a type. These are portraits of birds she has known.

For this exhibition, Linton has selected works featuring species native to the Pacific Northwest and familiar to the Lake Washington shoreline—neighbors, in the truest sense. The show brings together original works and curated reproductions, offering an entry point for visitors encountering her work for the first time.

Visit Erin's Website: https://www.orphangirlfineart.com/sewardpark