ArtSEA: Bed Bath & Beyond meets Bumbershoot

The Northwest lost an artist of unique vision last week: muralist and Marvel comic cover artist Jeffrey Veregge. He died of a heart attack on April 12, after a long struggle with complications due to lupus. He was 50.

A member of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Veregge developed his signature style by blending traditional Coast Salish formline techniques with his own love of pop culture, space exploration and comic book heroes. He dubbed his unmistakable look “Salish Geek.”

“People have an idea of what Native art is and what Salish art is,” Veregge told Crosscut in May 2020. “I want people to see that it can be contemporary in a way that still honors the intention of the form and the storytelling, but in a way that is new and unexpected.”

Unexpectedness is the charm of Veregge’s work, in which he portrayed Star Wars, Batman, the Seattle Seahawks and NASA missions with Salish flair and a midcentury modern sheen.  

You can find his exuberant “Reaching for Space” design on T-shirts at the Space Needle gift shop, peruse his space-age prints at Stonington Gallery, see his superhero work for Marvel comics, and check out one of his large murals in the staircase leading to the underground parking lot at Climate Pledge Arena.

Installed in 2021, the latter piece tells the story of our region in chronological layers, from the past to the future, bottom upward: Indigenous canoers and longhouses make way for settler homes, and above those, robot birds fly among tall trees rooted in history.

Veregge’s most recent installation adorns the new Tapestry apartment complex at 12th and Yesler, where his exterior design feature is visible from the street. He based the cascading metal “waterfall” on Salish basket-weaving patterns, and incorporated sleek formline bluebirds, which he said were flying upward to carry hope to the heavens.