Art + Community
Come Together
For The Greater Good

Karen Quint and Michelle Wyles serendipitously came together and created an art gallery to support the local art community, as well as financially support the Highland Food Bank, which fills a critical need in Tieton and Cowiche every week.

A series of events took place that sparked the idea to open Boxx Gallery:

• Many years ago the Highland Church, which used to house the Highland Food bank, closed.
• Michelle and her husband Rob generously offered to use part of a Tieton building they owned for the Highland Food Bank and get it running again.
• Highland Food Bank board members, Michelle and Karen, were concerned that the food bank’s fundraising was not keeping up with the increase of families in need.
• Michelle decided to close her wonderful and greatly-missed downtown Yakima clothing store, Garden Dance, to spend more time with family and work on her art.
• Allied Arts in Yakima closed.
• Visitors were showing up in Tieton every weekend wanting to see some art.
• Artists were making Tieton their home and building studios.

Fast forward to Michelle and Karen, both at Gallery One in Ellensburg, chatting about all of the above events. During their conversation, Karen had an “ah ha!” moment and suggested that they use the vacated space in the Wyle’s building for an art gallery. Then they came up with the idea to help sustain the Highland Food Bank with commissions from the art sold at the gallery. And there, an idea was born.

With the growing success of the gallery, Michelle’s vision grew to see a long-term future for the Boxx Gallery as a community asset.  She saw the need to set a future course for the gallery as a non-profit organization, and the Friends of Box Gallery was officially incorporated in August of 2020.

From the conception of the idea, to the realization of the completed gallery, there was only a two month span. Kerry Quint, a contractor/artist drew up the designs for the gallery space and managed the project. With the generous support of the Wyles and the help of many artist volunteers, the gallery opened its doors on Dec. 4th, 2015 with an Inaugural Exhibit of 18 regional artists. Karen Quint took on the position of Director, as all her previous experiences prepared her for this volunteer job. Michelle Wyles jumped in as bookkeeper, with her expertise and sense of duty. All other jobs were filled by wonderful and willing volunteers.

The result of everyone’s hard work is a beautiful open gallery space still currently sharing the building with the Highland Food Bank. Having the doors open each week with a new exhibit each month serves our mission to have arts accessible to all.

Helping serve the community, Boxx Gallery has held artist workshops, art projects for children, community meetings, and other events. And investing in the Highland Food Bank has also born fruit — it is now a thriving organization that we continue to support.