Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park Opens!



Last weekend's New York Times article told the story. NYC has sculpture park envy! And well they should. Somehow Seattle assembled nine acres of prime land and beach north of Pier 70. We couldn't get our act together to build a train or subway system, or to fix our decrepit Viaduct or the Rosselini Floating Bridge, but that's another rant. This is a time to celebrate. The park is a home run, as much for the sculpture as the park itself—a tour de force of architectural landscaping. WEISS / MANFREDI Architecture created this z-shaped park running from Western Avenue to Elliott Bay. The PACCAR Pavilion has sweeping views of the Olympic Mountains. My only regret about the park is that they couldn't somehow level one office building so you could view the Seattle P.I. globe, just up the block from the park. It's a nineteen-ton pop masterpiece.

We attended the park's grand opening on Sunday. Online, you can take an interactive tour or visit the Seattle Art Museum's web site.

Unfortunately, none of the photographs I've seen of the park do it justice. If you follow the trails, the park leads, eventually, to a beautiful pebble beach, with piles of driftwood to arrange and rearrange into forts and ad hoc sculptures. The beachfront includes a salmon haven (habitat?) of some sort.

There are three levels of art at work: bridges over the road and railroad tracks, trellises, native plantings (I think Salal and Oregon Grape, etc.) , cool benches and walkways and paths up the hills and down to the beach; sculptural works by the likes of Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, and many others, and installations and exhibits in the pavillion. Is this cool, or what?
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trey cool! Seattle does have some great parks and now it has one more.

Current NYC news: I'm in the process of buying an apartment in Brooklyn at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge!

Keekee Brummet said...

So Pete, I know you have a crib upstate somewhere (Sullivan County?)..have you been renting in Manhattan?

I lived two years in Brooklyn--in a loft on Jay Street, and a tenement on Atlantic Avenue, right across the street from the house of detention.

We were considered insane for living in Bklyn--it was not done back then, in the 80s. But I always loved the place. And even after getting out $300.month pad on the upper west side, we would go back.

Keelin and I almost once got a pad right under the bridge (on front street I think).

Congrats!

Anonymous said...

I've got a mountain townhouse in Greene county near Windham and am renting in the City. The Brooklyn apartment I'm angling for is on Adams which is adjacent to Jay. $300 gets you a parking space these days.

Check out the show I'm going to see near Woodstock next weekend:

http://www.bearsvilletheater.com/calendar/ollabelle-with-very-special-guests-donald-fagan-and-phoebe-snow

Pete

Keekee Brummet said...

Sound like a good show--in Ollabelle, the singer is Levon Helm's daughter who is rumored to have a great set of pipes. I read they toured with both Diana Krall (Elvis C's wife) and with one of my favorite alkt country guys Buddy Miller. Should be a great show! And Fagen too! I know he did that solo show years ago (NY Review) and Phoebe Snow blew the doors off trhe place.... Good luck on the Bklyn pad... /jack