Draft:Love City Love

LOVECITYLOVE is a nomadic non-profit event space and art gallery located in Seattle, Washington. Since its inception in 2012, LOVECITYLOVE has occupied nine commercial buildings throughout Seattle’s Capitol Hill Arts District and surrounding neighborhoods. Over the years, LOVECITYLOVE has activated these spaces to host art openings, graffiti art installations, pop-up boutiques, photoshoots, fundraisers, lectures, fashion line launches, fashion shows, yoga classes, and live music including open mics, an open deck series for local beat makers, album release parties, and dance parties.

History

LOVECITYLOVE was founded in 2012 by artist, photographer, and skateboarder Lucien Pellegrin. At the time of its founding, the effects of an upsurge of widespread property development, rising cost of living, and ongoing gentrification in Seattle contributed to economic conditions that resulted in local artists finding it increasingly challenging to secure resources and space to house arts venues. As a result of these conditions, Pellegrin identified a need to create more accessible and affordable space for art related community gatherings and events in Seattle, while also offering an alcohol free alternative to what he considered a cost prohibitive alcohol centered nightlife. Pellegrin has stated that LOVECITYLOVE was created in response to Seattle “not having enough authentic creative space for the people who made this city what it is” and that “Seattle isn’t doing enough for its creative folks despite the city’s reputation as a creative metropolis”.

Pellegrin's approach to establishing art spaces priced to meet the needs of artists with limited means has been to locate vacant commercial spaces that are slated for redevelopment or demolition and negotiate with landlords of these properties to establish reduced rental rates for short term rental agreements, while repurposing property that, according to Pellegrin, would otherwise be underutilized empty space. Noting the existence of a “quiet war between developers and artist”, the creation of LOVECITYLOVE was born out of what Pellegrin saw as a need for developers to collaborate with artists on providing financially feasible space for the arts while including artists in their planning.

Locations

In late 2012, LOVECITYLOVE’s first location was established in a storefront located Melrose and Pine in Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. Earlier that year, Madison Developers Group had announced plans to raise the building the storefront was housed in to make way for the construction of a mixed-use high rise building in its place as part of a larger campaign to bring urban density to Capitol Hill. This redevelopment project would result in the loss of all businesses on this block, including longstanding coffeeshop Bauhaus Strong Coffee. Envisioning a temporary home for LOVECITYLOVE's first location in an empty storefront in this building, Pellegrin expressed interest in renting this space for the purpose of establishing an art gallery to the landlord by slipping a handwritten note in the mail slot of the storefront that read “I’ve seen this space has been available for some time. I’m an artist living in the neighborhood and would like to create a gallery here." Cold calling landlords to inquire about renting property to house LOVECITYLOVE would later become the approach he’d use to secure future rental spaces.

Projects

Weekly Open Mic

At various locations since its inception, LOVECITYLOVE has hosted weekly all ages open mics under different names including Wednesday on Wednesdays and LOVECITYLOVE night. These drop-in open mic events, which have encouraged audience to “participate in two-way dynamic experience”, have featured live improvisational jazz, hip-hop, funk, and spoken word performances. Local participating artists and musicians have included vocalist Hollis Wong-Wear, double-bassist Evan Flory-Barnes, vocalist Adra Boo of Fly Moon Royalty, spoken word artist Olisa Enrico, drummer D’Vonne Lewis, and LOVECITYLOVE organizer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and Grammy nominee Amos Miller.

LOVECITYLOVE Collective

In addition to occupying physical spaces with the purpose of hosting arts and culture events, LOVECITYLOVE is also under the same name a performing arts ensemble and talent collective curated by Amos Miller. In 2024 the LOVECITYLOVE ensemble hosted and performed an event titled Freedom in Failure: That’s How the Light Gets In at Henry Art Museum. In 2025 the collective was featured in a performance at Frye Art Museum’s Salon Soiree.