The Pacific

My New Favorite Place In Seattle

is the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University.

 

When we moved to Seattle almost four years ago my brother Pat urged me to visit the Chapel of St. Ignatius. It took me awhile but I finally got there yesterday. What an experience. I arrived with a class of architectural students and followed along as the instructor, who had worked with the architect Steven Holl during design and construction, explained the thinking behind the design.

 

The interior space is organized around the concept of “a gathering of different lights” with light and dark spaces playing off each other. Holl imagined the chapel as “seven bottles of light in a stone box” with the color and light constantly changing depending on the time of day, the time of year, and the weather.

 

The impact of this amazing space is hard to describe. It is both exciting and comforting – at the same time. There is an intimacy about the space that encourages contemplation and wonder. Although each of the spaces flows into the other, each stands alone.

 

Photos here from the top are of the front and back of the nave, the choir, the reconciliation chapel and the Blessed Sacrament chapel (with a self portrait). 

 

Images taken February 2009

Just add people

After months of watching the new Olympic Sculpture Park take shape we were thrilled today to have an opportunity to visit it ourselves. What an exciting space! It’s already being hailed as an innovative approach to city planning that may become a model for other cities.

Part of the site design involved bridging both a major street and an active railroad track. This bridging is not only an important design element, it is also a metaphor for the many achievements of this remarkable park. It bridges the gap between the city and the waterfront, it brings together art and nature for an exciting educational opportunity (one exhibit contains a nurse tree and the sea wall was stabilized in a way that is salmon friendly), it was made possible through a remarkable public/private partnership in which most of the funding (even for maintenance) came from private contributions, and it will be free to everyone.

Walking through the park we were taken with the interaction of the city, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains beyond. Art seems at home in the environmental landscapes of valley, meadow, grove, and shore. Many thanks to all who made this possible.

The Seattle Times has prepared an interactive guide to the park that you may find useful. Additional information is available on the Seattle Art Museum site.

Image: Calder’s Eagle taken January 2007.

...and Stinger has landed

With the official opening of the Olympic Sculpture Park less than three months away, Seattle Art Museum (SAM) officials are beginning to install the sculpture itself. The latest addition is Tony Smith’s Stinger. Pictured here as it is being lowered into place this weekend, it is still wrapped to travel – but if you look closely you can see the black steel peeking out from the leading corner. The link above shows it fully undraped.

Image taken August, 2006.

Bob's View: Stacker

This is the first of occasional postings by Bob. The text and image are both by him.

This past weekend, the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park welcomed the installation of Richard Serra's Wake, a massive set of 5 pairs of 14-foot tall steel panels that will anchor the northern section of the park. Viewed from our window several hundred feet above the site, we can only imagine the excitement this work will create once the OSP opens later this year.

What may be of equal interest--and already accessible--to visitors to Myrtle Edwards Park (the older city park along the shore of Elliott Bay, just north of the new pocket beach that is being developed as part of the OSP) is an ongoing installation of rock-driftwood sculptures that have appeared along the shore. They sculptures extend for several hundred yards north from the fenced-off beach area. From a distance, they appear to be almost human-like in form, like sentinels keeping a silent watch over the bay. Up close, the separate pieces take on more individual characteristics. They range from modest cairn-size piles to larger piles and more complex structures of driftwood and rock. Individually they are interesting and appealing, fitting together cleanly with here and there evidence of a sensitive touch of a small rugged stone placed just so. Looked at as a whole, the pieces complete an ensemble that is truly impressive--an array of obviously man-made structures, but all natural stone and weathered wood, forming a lower frame to views of Elliott Bay and the Olympics beyond.

When I visited last Friday, the artist was working on what appeared to be a new piece that had one arm of driftwood sticking out over the water. When he paused and looked up, I asked if he had done all of them, and he said he had--every one of them. He came up from where he had been working and took off his baseball cap to wipe his forehead. He turned out to be a young-ish man with red hair and a red Vandyke beard. I asked if he had been required to repair any of them, and he said, "Oh, yes. On a daily basis." It's obviously been a dedicated labor of love.

He said that he had been working on these sculptures since before the 4th of July.

Apparently it's not just wind that requires the re-building of the sculptures, but "they" have torn them down (perhaps more than once). I expressed surprise at this and wondered why anyone would tear them down. He wasn't sure, but he allowed as how some might think that there was a safety issue (hard to imagine why one should be climbing the rugged rocks along the shore where these are installed, however).

"Who is 'they?'" I was curious.

"Who knows--the 'authorities,' I guess." (Or perhaps unappreciative youngsters who find pleasure in knocking them over?)

"I'm Stacker, by the way," he introduced himself. "My friends call me "Stacker" or "Stack."

It's worth going down to see Stacker's installation. It may not be as permanent as the Wake, but it's a nice addition to the waterfront for now, and it demonstrates the creative, free spirit that seems to be embodied in so many of our Seattle residents.

Image: Taken by Bob at Myrtle Edwards Park, July 2006.

Glass

Anyone who has ever watched a piece of glass being fabricated from sand heated to an impossible temperature knows the wonder of watching an alchemist. The ancient art of making glass has been going on for over 22 centuries but contemporary glass art has a special power and beauty.

Maybe it's the light collecting capability of glass that has made it almost a regional art form for the pacific northwest. When the days get short and gray, glass reflects and refracts light creating warmth and color. Dale Chihuly, a Tacoma native, is one of the best known glass blowers in the world. The region is also blessed with one of the country's few museums devoted entirely to glass art, The Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

Christopher Ries is from Ohio (another state that has its share of gray winters). He is another astonishingly good glass artist. Unlike Chihuly, who blows his fantastic glass shapes, Ries sculpts clear, optical glass into strong evocative forms that have an immediate emotional impact.

Image: Glass artist in front of a glory hole at the Startfish Glassworks in Victoria, BC. Taken May 2006.