Editor's Note: Forging the Future

I sometimes feel like our region suffers from artistic complacency. Like all the comforts of living here have deadened our hunger, like we’re living in a tiny village where everybody already knows everybody and there’s nothing new to discover anymore.

The Future List is City Arts’ antidote to that morass of useless thinking. In this issue, we present 20 sources of ingenuity to inspire us forward and reveal pockets of unfamiliar activity. These culture-makers represent an enormous swath of influence. They’re forging the future with their ideas and determination, whether by writing, rapping or concocting cocktails. It’s not a list of people you already know, it’s a list of people you want to meet.

Assembling the names alone was fun for our staff, but the real pleasure was in the interviews: sprawling and exciting conversations with artists about their work, their communities and where things are going from here. I left each one buzzing with enthusiasm.

This motley, magnetic group is proof of the untapped potential of our community. Each of these 20 is standing on the front lines of innovation in the arts, taking risks and pushing this place to become sustainable and fruitful for lifelong artistic careers. From the edge of Pangea, in American’s final frontier town, they project the enterprising spirit that makes us want to be here in the first place. See for yourself, starting on page 23.

But these pioneers are not the first. The history of Seattle is loaded with characters whose fingerprints are all over today’s culture—not least of whom is Bruce Pavitt, the enigmatic Sub Pop founder who brought Seattle’s last major movement to the fore with his manifestos, mix tapes and rejection of music’s major labels. But Pavitt jumped ship on Sub Pop and Seattle in 1996. In “Enter Space Buddha” (page 34), Jonathan Zwickel explains why, what Pavitt’s been doing since and where he’s looking for the next revolution.

See you out there,
LEAH BALTUS
Editor in Chief
leahb@cityartsmagazine.com