Welcome Home: A Reclamation
Ten straight days of design. Then 3,000 square feet in 30 days. A miracle. Welcome Home is the most personal work Michael has ever made. Spokane is where he was raised, and where, as a boy, he was nearly lost to violence. Decades later he came home with a brush in his hand—not to revisit the harm, but to reclaim the place. Eleven Smithsonian-quality murals, designed and painted by Michael with the support of local artists and volunteers, now live inside Scale House Market, the Inland Northwest's first year-round farmers market and food hall.
The eleven murals flow together as one story about farming, connection, the love of land and nature, and our roots. “Creation” carries the hands of Michael's grandfather, Lester Lee Hopkins, a tree farmer and logger from Idaho, descending from the heavens to plant seeds in the Palouse soil. “The Mother” gives us Mother Earth cradling the world at her belly, from whom all life is birthed. “Rooted” bows to the native communities who first nurtured this land, “Living Earth” reveals the hidden universe beneath the soil, and “From Dawn to Dusk” pays tribute to Diego Rivera's social realism. Each one leads to the next, all the way to the table, where food becomes equity and everyone who grows it, shares it, and gathers around it becomes one community. The story is in direct harmony with the market's own intention—a hub for the community built on food security, education, and local agriculture.
Today Scale House Market is a destination. State of Washington Tourism calls the series Michael's love letter to his hometown. In its first year the market welcomed more than 180 vendors and hundreds of culinary and educational workshops, and every week families, farmers, and neighbors convene beneath these walls. Design to fabrication—entirely ours. One of a kind. Welcome home.
