At the Wing Luke Museum, Paradice Avenue Souf’s (PAS) latest exhibition “Back Home: Utopia in Seattle” reimagines “ancestral connection and cultural exchange.”

“Highlighting emerging artists from the city, PAS, based in the South End, finds connections between Black and Brown communities across time, water, and along Seattle bus lines. Photography, delicately rendered gold-leaf paintings, and illustration are all highlights in the show” (Jas Keimig, The South Seattle Emerald).

In this article, Keimig speaks with local artist Zion Thomas, an SDF’25 volunteer who documented the Festival through photography, and captured some of Block Party weekend’s most memorable social media moments. Featured as an Emerging Artist in this exhibition, Zion’s photography captures Paradice’s latest clothing collection in an unlikely place: the King County Metro.

When thinking about this clothing collection, a T-shirt with a 36 bus line graphic sparked Zion’s inspiration for this shoot.

“I felt like it would be smart to think about South Seattle and International District bus routes as remnants of the Silk Road,” Zion told the South Seattle Emerald. “If you go on the 106, if you go on the 36, if you go on the 7, and you’re heading to Chinatown, you’ll see this beautiful parade of folks of color on the bus in their own little worlds. I wanted to capture that beauty.”

Zion’s photography is an “act of celebration,” with his photography practice starting out as a love letter to his community, being born and raised in Seattle’s South End. “A lot of my personal vision is really tied to those elements of visibility and community and storytelling, but it’s also about radical optimism,” he said.

Help us celebrate design in our community by visiting the exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum, on-view through July 26, 2026.

LEARN MORE

READ THE SOUTH SEATTLE EMERALD’S ARTICLE

FOLLOW ZION ON INSTAGRAM

Photos by Zion Thomas, courtesy of the South Seattle Emerald and SDF