Seven Coffee Roasters Blog

Ken Giles is a Seattle son—he grew up in the neighborhoods of Greenwood and Phinney Ridge, he attended UW and rowed on the crew team, he went abroad as a member of the US Navy, and then he returned to the Greenwood and Phinney Ridge area to continue the pursuit of an enduring passion.

At the age of thirteen, Ken Giles began working in his uncle’s grocery, Erikson’s Market, on Greenwood. And in 1955, Ken Giles purchased his first grocery, a local location of the Independent Grocers Alliance, and he renamed the business Ken Giles IGA. Sixty-three years later, Ken Giles IGA is Ken’s Market, there is a second Ken’s Market in Queen Anne, and the Giles clan also owns and operates Marketime Foods in Fremont.

In our modern world of big-box stores and online giants, of national brands and viral marketing campaigns, it’s good to find small pockets of simple hometown wholesomeness and neighborliness still exist, even in one of the biggest brand cities of them all. 

If you walked into Green Markets’ Sunset Hill location as late as early January, you might have seen on the wall to your left pictures of some of the trick-or-treaters who stopped by the shop this past Halloween. The many smiling faces are a cute reminder of how and for whom Green Markets of Ballard Seattle have operated for more than twenty years. 

How do you explain your artistic style? What mediums/ tools do you work with?

I am a collage artist, using magazine photos almost exclusively. Because anyone can do it, no matter their art skills, I consider collage “the people’s art.” Had I not found and used these images, they would likely have been recycled or thrown away; beauty and meaning are resurrected from trash.