©2008 ORBITING INFINITY • 15'' h x 11'' w x 11''d

I recently completed a commissioned piece, titled ‘Orbiting Infinity’, and shipped it to its owners in California last month.

It’s a mixed-media creation, made from wood, wood veneer, brass screws, nickel-plated washers, acrylic gels, pastes and paints, copper and colored wires in various gauges and horse hair, and contains a battery-operated motor hidden from view on the inside.

The motor is accessed from the back and causes the delicate wire and horse hair top section to slowly orbit the main body of sculpture.

©2008 ORBITING INFINITY • Top view

©2008 ORBITING INFINITY • Close up view of top section

Inside view of PACCAR Pavilion from main entrance

Yesterday morning, when I walked through the door to the PACCAR Pavilion, the main entrance to Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, it appeared to be almost devoid of people.

My favorite seating area in Pavilion for spectacular and ever changing views of park sculptures and shipping activity on Elliott Bay

As I sat down at my favorite table near the glass wall facing Elliott Bay, happily anticipating several relaxed hours spent reading and sketching, I noticed a beehive of activity in the Alvord Art Lab. Intrigued, I quietly entered the room. Ms. Victoria Clayton’s 35 6th grade students, on a field trip from the Annie Wright school in Tacoma, were in that room making sculptures from found materials, including wire and pieces of wood. These students were focused and totally oblivious to me as I stood at the doorway watching them create.

Ms. Victoria Clayton outside the Pavilion classroom with part of Geoff McFetridge installation 'In the Mind' visible to left

Part of Geoff McFetridge 'In the Mind' site-specific installation

Annie Wright 6th graders heading to PACCAR Pavilion entrance with sculptures in tow

Out in the main space, Victoria explained that her 11-year-old students had completed an earlier docent-led tour of two sections of the park. When the kids were on the Seattle Cloud Cover bridge, which connects the West Meadow and Grove to the Shore, the noise from traffic and the loud voices of the children made it difficult to hear the docent. At the highest section of the park, the North Meadow area, the kids wanted to stand under Calder’s massive 40 foot tall stabile, EAGLE. They were excited to view such a huge sculpture at such close range.

One of the students, Daniel, a budding photographer, looked up and started framing parts of the sculpture with his fingers. He asked Victoria to shoot those images and she did. The kids had a fine time viewing the Space Needle and Elliott Bay through various sections of Calder’s sculpture.

When they left the Eagle and walked down a narrow path into the Valley and came upon Richard Serra’s monumental sculpture WAKE, they got quieter and quieter, and when they started walking around and through the five parts of the 300-ton sculpture they stopped talking completely. TOTAL SILENCE. Victoria was amazed. Such is the power of art.

Sixth grade artists with sculptures, collecting backpacks and jackets at entrance to PACCAR Pavilion, as they prepare for drive back to Annie Wright School in Tacoma

ONE MUSEUM - THREE LOCATIONS

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) sponsors a dizzying array of lectures, events, Cell Phone Audio Tours, Guided Tours, film viewings and other educational programs for adults and students. Check here to find out more.

•SAM Downtown, 1st Avenue & Union Street (Free admission on First Thursdays)

•Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 Prospect St. Volunteer Park (Free admission on First Saturdays)

•Olympic Sculpture Park, 2901 Western Avenue, Downtown Waterfront (Admission always free)

Here are descriptions of two guided tours at the Olympic Sculpture Park, quoted from the official Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park Map & Guide:

A Walk in the Park
Explore the Environment of the Olympic Sculpture Park with Local Experts

These monthly walks will be led by organizations that specialize in the environment and ecology of the Puget Sound area. Meet your guide and group in the PACCAR Pavilion every second Saturday at 1 p.m.

Site, Sculpture, Shoreline
Discovering the Olympic Sculpture Park
Saturdays, 11 a.m. and Sundays, 2 p.m.

Experience the Olympic Sculpture Park’s dynamic spaces and learn about the design and layout of the park, site history, selected sculptures, and more. Bring your walking shoes and meet a SAM docent in the PACCAR Pavilion.

EAGLE (and crow) stabile by Alexander Calder, created in 1971, stands 40 feet tall

Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park officially opened on January 20, 2007, and has quickly become a popular destination not only for locals, but for visitors from around the world. It is truly unique, as far as sculptural parks go. The location is fabulous - right on Elliott Bay - with unobstructed views north toward Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains and south toward the city of Seattle and the Port of Seattle.

And you can get up close and personal with over 20 works of art!!

Calder's EAGLE frames one of Seattle's ubiquitous ferrries on Elliott Bay

The Olympic Sculpture Park is quite remarkable in that it is built on three separate land parcels - a very unusual undertaking indeed - literally separated by railroad tracks with frequent train traffic and a very busy Elliott Avenue. For years, when Judy and I drove past the bottom section of this fenced-in land mass, overgrown with weeds and harboring the foundations of several brick buildings, we’d speculate about the ultimate use of this land, never even dreaming of its ultimate transformation.

In the 1990s the Washington Department of Ecology, in partnership with Union Oil of California (who developed the land in 1910 as a fuel storage and transit facility and phased out operations in the 1980s) removed 120,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil and installed a groundwater recovery system, paving the way for its eventual reincarnation as Olympic Sculpture Park.

View from lookout on Alaskan Way - train tracks are beneath the railing, Tony Smith's WANDERING ROCKS can be seen at center, and Mark Dion's NEUKOM VIVARIUM and PACCAR Pavilion are visible at top right

It is nothing short of amazing that New York architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi transformed this awkward nine-acre parcel of land into a strikingly beautiful sculpture park and managed to incorporate four distinct Northwest landscapes:
1. The Valley, with fir and cedar trees, ferns, groundcovers and an outdoor amphitheater
2. The Grove, with native aspen, birch and maple trees
3. The Meadow, with bridges and gently sloped open paths that to lead you throughout the park
4. The Shore, right at the water’s edge, with pines and a small beach area, designed for salmon habitat recovery in Elliott Bay.

It’s a wonderful experience to walk through these four completely different ‘zones’, look down on moving trains and heavy traffic, and see small and very large scale art at the same time! Very unique, indeed.

PACCAR Pavilion as seen from street - note Dennis Oppenheim's huge SAFETY CONE at center and Roxy Pine's stainless steel tree, titled SPLIT, at far left

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The main entrance to the park is located in the sleek glass and steel PACCAR Pavilion, at Western and Broad, in the upper NW corner. This building, with a parking lot underneath, houses a gift shop, cafe/coffee shop, a classroom/meeting room, and, on the second floor, park headquarters.

In addition to the permanant outdoor sculptures, Olympic Sculpture Park will exhibit temporary installations as well.

View from just outside the entrance to PACCAR Pavilion

Photo of Richard Serra's WAKE framed by Anthony Caro's sculpture RIVIERA, taken outside PACCAR Pavilion

Richard Serra's massive 300-ton sculpture 'Wake', consists of five pieces, each 14 feet high and 50 feet long

Currently you’ll find five huge orange Safety Cones by installation artist Dennis Oppenheim sited throughout the park, and a site-specific installation in the  PACCAR pavilion by artist and graphic designer Geoff McFetridge, titled In The Mind.

When I recently Googled ‘Olympic Sculpture Park’ there were allegedly 479,000 websites that referenced the park! Here are three that I highly recommend.

This Wikipedia link is excellent. You’ll find a history of the park and dozens of links, including links with information on the sculptures and biographies of the artists. You can spend many enlightening hours here.

Click Olympic Sculpture Park/Seattle Times Newspaper for videos and slide shows. You can watch the park’s entire construction process in the photo sequence ‘park built in a minute’, take a ‘Virtual Tour’ of the park, view ‘Eagle in flight to park’ and see Alexander Calder’s 40 ft tall sculpture take shape in its new surroundings, watch ‘Art Alfresco’ and view photos of each art work, explore the park with an interactive map, view information on the art and the artists, and much more.

Click Unplanned ‘offspring’ at Olympic Sculpture Park get SAM’s blessing to see a nest of recently hatched ‘eaglets’ next to Alexander Calder’s “Eagle” sculpture.

TYPEWRITER ERASURE, SCALE X, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, sited on hillside above Western Avenue, on loan through 2009 from the Paul Allen family

PERRE'S VENTAGLIO by Beverly Pepper with PACCAR Pavilion in background

BUNYON'S CHESS by Mark di Suvero

SCHUBERT SONATA by Mark di Suvero with Elliott Bay in Background

Glass bridge titled SEATTLE CLOUD COVER, by Teresita Fernandez on left, and one of Dennis Oppenheim's SAFETY CONES on right

Fountain titled FATHER AND SON by Louise Bourgeois, and another one of Dennis Oppenheim's SAFETY CONES, as viewed from Uptown Espresso (best coffee in Seattle) located in Pier 70 on Alaska Way. SEATTLE CLOUD COVER Bridge at top right crosses over train tracks

In this photo you're looking at the same SAFETY CONE visible in the previous photo through the space between the last two cars of a fast moving train. Note the real traffic safety cone lying on its side at bottom right

'The Shore', on Elliott Bay, features a tidal garden with kelp, algae and other plants that are revealed and concealed with the changing tides

'It's No Secret' (oil and enamel on wood, 48" x 42", 2008). One of many Terry Turrell paintings and sculptures on exhibit at the Grover/Thurston Gallery in Pioneer Square

It was a tough choice, but we decided to watch the vice-presidential debate instead of visiting galleries in Pioneer Square on First Thursday Art Walk, and missed the opening night reception for Seattle artist Terry Turrell.

We found out about Terry Turrell’s exhibit when we read ‘Overwhelmed with Inspiration’ in Art Access, written by artist and arts writer Molly Norris (we also viewed Molly’s current exhibit - ‘Paper Cuts: Works by Kate Sweeney and Molly Morris’, at Gallery 110 in Pioneer Square. Be sure to see this exhibit, too, when you take in Terry Turrell’s show). Molly’s article and the accompanying photos were compelling - we marked our calendar for Saturday, Oct 4th.

Terry Turrell is a self-taught artist. 27 years ago he sold painted tee shirts from a stall in the Pike Place Market. Fast forward to today, which just happens to be Terry’s 62nd birthday, and the day we viewed his solo show of recent paintings and sculpture at the Grover/Thurston Gallery in Pioneer Square. This is one of the most exciting shows by a contemporary artist I’ve ever seen. And it’s a BIG show - lots and lots of mixed-media paintings and sculptures, constructed from wood, linen, tin, wire, found objects, and oil and enamel paints, with some encaustic paintings thrown in for good measure. WOW!

Terry Turrell is an absolute master at creating rich, narrative surfaces that compel the viewer to explore every square inch in depth for partially obscured words and images. The show is a luscious, visual feast, and Terry’s incredible surface treatments made me want to explore his works not only with my eyes but with my hands - they are incredibly tactile!

The Terry Turrell show runs October 2nd - November 1st, 2008. Mark your calendar now!

Click here to read an informative article about Terry Turrell, written in 1998 by Robin Updike, Art Critic for the Seattle Times.

©2008 PLAYING WITH CALDER • Miniature book sculpture

Just what is a miniature book anyway? The Miniature Book Society defines a miniature book as follows:

In the United States, a miniature book is usually considered to be one which is no more than three inches in size - height, width or thickness. Some collectors do occasionally acquire slightly larger books. Outside of the United States, books up to four inches are collected as miniature books.

This definition refers to a book when it is closed and in its slipcase, portfolio or other type of container, if any. When a miniature book is opened, it can extend beyond 3″ in any direction.

If you’ve read previous posts, you know my favorite artist is Alexander Calder. Calder’s fascination with the universe played a huge role in his art throughout his life. In 2006 I created a miniature book, in an edition of 100, to honor this outstanding 20th century artist. I enjoyed the research for this project - I read lots of books and viewed hundreds of photos, both in print and on-line, of Calder’s work. Calder’s art makes me feel good, which is definitely one of the reasons I like it so much.

‘Playing With Calder’ incorporates a tiny book with a biography of Calder and my discovery of him and his art at age seventeen, along with a tiny wire sculpture with a hand-operated crank that causes a ‘constellation’ to revolve freely in space. When the book and sculpture are placed inside the box, ‘Playing With Calder’ measures 3″ H x 2 7/8″ W x 2 7/8″ D. Each of the three main components in each book sculpture in the edition is totally handmade. You can purchase a signed copy of this fabulous little treasure right here.

The images below outline the process involved in making this miniature book edition, and show some of the models I made as I developed my ideas for the finished piece.

Three of the kinetic wire sculptures have cranks at the top and some have matboard bases with boxes and books - prototype for the edition 'constellation' is shown at right in the front row

A few of the many box, book and book pocket models. One box is made of matboard with a wire-edge hinged top - others are made of cardstock with varying wall thicknesses. Several book and portfolio/pocket models are in the first two rows. The box on the right and the book and pocket third from left are prototypes for the edition components

Book cover, page strips, hinges, pocket, beads and thread are at the top. Wire and beads for the interactive 'constellation' sculpture are shown at left, and cardstock for the box, cardstock and brass brad for closure button, polyester film for window, wooden feet, beads and thread are pictured at right. These components make one complete book structure

Four completed ©2008 PLAYING WITH CALDER book structures. The book pocket, book cover and crank-operated 'constellation' sculpture are partially visible through a polyester film window at the top of each box