Artist: Tori Shao (website, Instagram)
Location: 2nd & Blanchard
Mural Description
Painted during the Belltown Mural Festival 2026.
Two of Tori’s murals are on this building: the Belltown Hellcat on the west face of the building and the Seawolves are the south face of the building. This is a two-year project by Tori in 2025 and 2026 mural festivals to occupy the boarded up windows of the old Crocodile Lounge.
This particular project was a direct collaboration between Tori and the property owner to come up with something in her trademark aesthetic or her trademark style that has some element of animal life.
The Belltown Hellcat is again an overseer or caretaker of the Belltown neighborhood directly on 2nd Avenue while the Seawolves are also a native northwestern animal that was on the brink of extinction in the 1930s and came back to prowl which is a metaphor of Belltown’s re-emergence as a neighborhood not of the 1930s but of today.
An animal of near extinction returning to prosperity is a gesture of positivity and growth.
Artist Statement
Tori bio from Belltown Mural Festival:
Tori is a Seattle-based illustrator and landscape architect. In both fields, her work is inspired by our cultural and ecological relationships to objects, plants, and one another.
Born and raised in Washington, her work spans various mediums and is especially informed by the diversity of ecologies, geology, flora and fauna of the state; and often explores themes of community, diversity, journey, growth, connection, and conservation.
Map (see murals near me) / Belltown Murals general information