Photos from CoCA "Help Wanted," Belltown & Vulcan
This entry consists mostly of photographs
downtown and from the Center on Contemporary Art's current exhbition -
"Help Wanted: Collaborations in Art." The show is sponsored by Born
Magazine and runs through April 23. Some photographs show off the
quarky personality traits of Belltown and highlight a few of the interesting
elements of a part of town which is rapidly evolving. The photos were taken on
a very cloudy and drizzly day - so don't expect to be blasted back from your
monitor by the brilliance of the colors. Also, although I've taken the liberty
to capture some of the collaborative works of art at CoCA, all the works are
copyrighted by the artists/writers/producers involved and probably also by Born
Magazine. Use of the photos for anything but personal or educational purposes
must be cleared with the artists or Born Magazine. I've tried to capture the
feel of at least one of the works.
The South Lake Union part of town, which I had to
traverse to get from Pike Place Market to CoCA, is called "Cascade." It's
bounded by Denny Way on the south, the I-5/East Lake Avenue conduit on the east,
and by Broad Street and Aurora Avenue on the west. Oh, it's bounded by Lake
Union on the north. The Center on Contemporary Art has their gallery somewhat
smack dab in the middle of this neighborhood. It's also the home of Consolidated
Works and Recreation Equipment's (REI) flagship store.
There is also a raft of other interesting places like the Guitar Center, Glazer's
Photo, several other local and crafts-style outdoor outfitters, the
Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center and a goodly collection of restaurants, clubs, bars,
coffee shops and French pastry shops (pâtisserie). It's a former
industrial warehouse area, so there are also a large number of strangely unique
businesses which have either survived in their original location or moved into
an abandoned factory-warehouse.
It's one of the more interesting areas to crawl around because mixed in with these other establishments are half the city's media giants. The Times and KING-TV are both located in Cascade. The P-I, KOMO-TV and KIRO-TV are just barely outside the neighborhood and are all three congregated near each other in what is either north Belltown or south Uptown (south South Queen Anne) - sort of a "no person's land" - really just like Cascade.
Which is why I would like to rename this whole area "Vulcan." It's the flatlands which were created to give the businesses at the turn of the century a place to plant their factories in easy reach of the railroad tracks to the south and which wander through the area and to the docks on the north on the lake and the southwest on the bay. It's been dug, tons of it removed to make way for these developments and helping create Harbor Island, and it's been re-purposed a handful of times as the city grew around it and new uses were required for this parcel - roughly three oddly shaped square miles.
Why Vulcan? Vulcan was the Roman god of fire. He made tools for the other gods. Vulcan is also the name of Paul Allen's real estate and development firm. Paul Allen would like to turn South Lake Union into one of the planet's densest and most productive bio-engineering and genetic research campuses. The "Hutch" (as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is called locally) is already blasting forward in a number of areas and has nobel laureates on its staff. The neighborhood very likely will get a three-or-so mile long modern trolley system coursing through it - and connecting to the existing trolley and the coming monorail and light rail where all these lines cross at the north end of downtown - Westlake Center and Stewart Street. The facilities and shops and collections of human endeavor located in the South Lake Union area could easily be construed as "tools for the gods." The individuals and organizations which call Cascade home provide some of the best fodder for the rest of us here in the city. New ideas, new products, new services. This part of town is an in-city laboratory for the practice of evolving urban spaces and evolving urban work practices. Whereas formerly there were shipwrights on the south shore of the lake, now there are still shipwrights and maritime service companies (as in old) but also media outlets and outdoor recreation and creative enterprise product and service establishments. Soon there will be a large-acreage lakeside park which will try and integrate Lake Union into the fabric of the area with an esplanade south to Mercer Street. There are even plans to turn one of the city's worst and most congested, accident-prone, hard-to-cross thoroughfares (Mercer) into an esplanaded boulevard.
I believe all this will happen. There's a lot of political weight behind these moves. There's a lot of Paul Allen's money and personality behind these moves. All these things will turn what is now a place of great imagination and progress into such a place with a reasonably attractive surrounding. Presently, there's nothing worthy of "seeing" in Cascade with respect to views. It's the flatlands, remember that. It was deliberately made flat by humans and their earth-moving machines of the time. It's probably as flat as one could get something in this hilly, glacier-carved, water-and-mountain surrounded region. The only other parts of town which are as flat are the man-made Harbor Islands and the runways at Boeing Field and Sea-Tac. So, in my mind the name Vulcan applies also because it's almost as if Cascade is the remnant caldera of a volcano - flat and encircled.
So, here I was walking from Pike Place Market area, down the back way - Western Avenue - toward Belltown so I could traverse Belltown and enter Vulcan from the southwest. My destination was CoCA - in the heart of Vulcan, and meandering along Western and then Denny Way and then Dexter allowed me to capture the feel of two distinctive neighborhoods - but capture that feel along the boundary conditions - where they met. One can find mystery and allure in almost anything. Schlepping around the city I'm always looking for that odd element which seems either out of place or deliberately placed in some juxtaposition.
The photos below show some of what I found along with images form CoCA's "Help Wanted" exhibition.
I mentioned that it was gray and drizzly, it was also foggy with these fog banks moving
southward at a fast clip - perhaps 15 miles per hour. Watching downtown for a minute
or longer would let one see buildings appear and disappearing -
like an airplane flying into and out of clouds.
The same with the Space Needle. This particular moment the saucer
part is obscured, but in less than half-a-minute, it reappeared. This kind
of weather is actually very invigorating to be out and about in.
It was also raining and not, the way weather works around here. One minute it's clear and
dry, the next it's foggy and a chill has arrived, the next it's actually dripping liquid from the sky,
and then something else comes along. Not enough moisture to "wet" one and if you don't
mind being damp all the time, it's great fun and good for the skin and sinuses, too!
My trek began at the edge of Victor Steinbrueck Park which is a grassy area just west of the Pike Place Market buildings. The
park gives a great view of the back of the market, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and downtown, and not shown in this view, but, also
of the harbor area and the rest of Elliott Bay. The top floor of the three-story yellow building left of center is street level at First Avenue.
Looking in the other direction from the same Steinbrueck Park overlook. The harbor is on the left with the Aquarium and other dockside
attractions lining the waterfront. The penisula across the bay is West Seattle. Victor Steinbrueck was almost singularly responsible for
rescuing Pike Place Market and all the historic properties from a planned destruction at the hands of a planned development. Now, it's
the icon and poster child for viable city markets in the U.S. It also clears close to $100 million a year in combined sales of its vendors,
merchants, farmers and fishers, and artists and craftspeople. Plus, it's a tourist magnet making it a "must see" for people watching.
The corner of Bay and Western has a condominium on the southeast
corner. It's an area of new condos, new shops and restaurants, and
fancy architectural service organizations. It's technically Belltown.
Belltown has taken upon itself to produce some of the city's finest
urban and public art. Below are the grating covers for the lower
level garage of the complex.
Above, a set of four metal sculptures posing in front of the fresh air vents to the condominium's indoor parking garage.
Here's another set of four metal sculptures adorning the residential condominium complex at Bay and Western.
Most of the actual units would have views facing Elliott Bay or the rest of downtown. Some would have views of
the Space Needle and other landmarks. Spiffy, in-city, living.
From the top left and going clockwise to the bottom left, these are images taken looking south
along the alley between major streets on Denny Way starting with the alley between First and
Second Avenues (top left) and ending with the alley between 6th & 7th Avenues (bottom left).
The only exceptions are the center two bottom images, which are of the south and then north
sides of the monorail guideway down the middle of Fifth Avenue. The rest of the streetscapes
are up alleys looking south toward downtown.
This is the first city park and is at the corner of Denny Way and Dexter Avenue, called Denny Park. Denny Way is on the right, and
Dexter Avenue is in the left. From here it's about a three-block walk straight through the park to REI's flagship store. It's also just a
two-block walk to CoCA along Dexter. The park also contains the headquarters of Seattle's Parks & Rec Department. Reminds
me of the National Park Service's National Capitol Parks headquarters set in East Potomac Park. Probably the influence again
of the Olmsted Brothers in both places. To my sense of urban "feel," Washington DC, Montreal, and Seattle "feel" the same.
That's a probable reason why they're my three favorite cities in North America. Surprisingly, Des Moines "feels" the same,
but way, way tinier. Kind of like the Micro Toy version. That could explain my high regard and respect for Iowans. That
and their acceptance and gracious accommodation of the Amish in the Amana villages.
Looking west along Denny Way, this is the Group Health building at the corners of 6th and 5th Avenues and
Denny Way. In the early 1970's, when I lived on Capitol HIll and worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, this
was the P-I Building and the main entrance was right in front, on the corner of 6th & Denny. I used to park my bike in
the back, under the monorail guideway and on the other side of the street from the P-I, on 5th Avenue. The
P-I globe was then exactly like it looks in the picture above. The P-I moved down to Elliott Avenue a decade
or so ago and moved their globe with them. The new building has great views out over Elliott Bay and is
a gleaming and well-done, tasteful, modern glass-and-steel structure in shades of blue reflective glass - which
enhances the blue of the P-I globe. I worked on the third floor, the floor above which has the overhang. I worked
in the city room and we had views looking east over Capitol Hill, the U-District and parts of Lake Union. At the
time we all thought we worked in the "Daily Planet" building. That was definitely one of Seattle's "cool" periods.
Across the way from the park is a new office, retail, residential development. Rock Memories
has a corner location facing Denny Way - a busy passer-by location for both cars and
pedestrians. It's a rock memorabilia store - T-shirts, posters, mugs, pins, clips, stickers and
decals.
The view from Denny Way into Rock Memories' window. It's not that large an interior but
it is filled to the rafters with stuff. I'm presuming their market is the outgoing flow from
Seattle Center and the Experience Music Project, both of which are mere blocks west of
here.
Nearby, on Dexter Avenue, is KING-TV's off-site parking lot. I was bemused by the subtle differences between the parking slots for
"employees" and "guests." Notice that the employees get to park amidst flowers and plantings and the guests get to park against
a concrete wall.
Every now and then some vehicle has a sticker, decal, or slogan which catches my eye.
This was on the doors of two white Ford F-250 trucks which had been outfitted with a
serious mobile laboratory sitting in place of the truck's usual truckbed. I'm guessing they
use snakes and moles equipped with infrared, ultraviolet and normal light imaging systems.
I was saying how flat Vulcan is. This is at the corner of Thomas Street and Dexter Avenue. Lake Union is toward the middle of the image.
On the right the hill in the distance is Capitol Hill. On the left the slight rise in the street elevation heads toward the slowly rising Aurora
Avenue, which in just about two blocks north (behind yellow building) becomes a limited-access highway.
Directly across the street in the view above is this refrigeration company. They apparently have been in this same
location and building since 1937 but have clearly evolved to remain in business. They sell specialty refrigeration
units for stores, restaurants, and the very fancy homes the area seems to also abound in.
A few doors down from the refrigeration company is this showroom for a company which makes really cool folders and briefcases. It's called
"Lost in Luggage" and their folders, covers, and cases look like they combine anodized metal and acrylic. I'll have to go back when they're
open so I can see if what I suspect is their really high price is worth owning one of these things. I'd like to see how easy it is to put papers or
sketches in one of these. They definitely are eye-catching!
One more door up the block is this architectural firm. This whole area is like this one block with some kind of
artsy, craftsy, or creative mechanical endeavor establishment right after the other. Makes for interesting wandering.
Looking inside Swift & Company's offices shows off what is clearly a working architect's workplace. More fun, though,
are the deer leaping across the walls on painted canvases. I was thinking that maybe they remind themselves they're
landscape architects by having the outdoor animals leaping around their offices like this. There were other, smaller,
reminders of the outdoors on the desks and on some of the other surfaces.
And then right in the middle of the block is the Center on Contemporary Art's gallery. The two top pictures show
the marquee in each of the windows which flank the red main entrance. The placard was in front of the door on
the sidewalk. Reminds one almost of a European approach to gallery space.
Stepping back into the street shows how truly narrow an entry-way this is for such a major
exhibition space inside. These old warehouses are great like that because you can't ever tell
which storefront opens into what amount of huge, back-room, space.
Hitting one right inside the front door is this documentary about Ballard&Ballard
- a one-time first-generation cable network wonderkind which combined intellectual
prowess with revolutionary and deconstructionist social theories. The television
show ran for two years and matched up two separate "geniuses" named Ballard
whose own lives were an individual whirlpool of fame, fortune, controversy, and
eventually fall. Both individuals are now "missing" on the planet. This exhibit takes
at least thirty minutes to understand but if committed, the time is well worth it if for no
other reason than an intricate tour back into time - the time warp covers the 70's and
80's with nuggets and detailed sociological analysis which covers events and people
most of us have never heard of. My take on the "meaning" of the documentary is that
these two geniuses, whose lives were a twisted set of fates and malapropos congruencies,
are representative of "America" at large and the path and fate of the Ballards might just
as easily have been that of any American. Their lives were not that atypical of the rest
of us - except for.... and that's the draw of the exhibit.
Occupying a large space and intricately assembled with amazing attention to engineering detail (balancing
a sofa on the end of a table itself on top of a chest-of-drawers) is "The Estate of Beverly Thomas." This woman
lived to be 95 years old and this exhibit shows off her life with recorded interviews playing over digitized 1950's
pictures on vintage 1960's television sets and radios. Each of the thousands of items was part of her estate and
tells a tale of part of her life. And since most of this stuff was collected in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, the exhibit also
tells a part of the lives of the rest of us. Anyone who sees this will recognize at least one artifact from Beverly
Thomas' estate as something from their own childhood or young adulthood. Now if all this could somehow be
reduced to a 3-D hologram and fitted on a DVD - that would be a record of someone's life Absolut reductio.
One of the interactive exhibits is called "Freud on Ice" and is represented by these five refrigerator doors (hanging
on the wall) and this one lying-on-its-back full refrigerator. The work uses hundreds of magnetic "words" or "phrases"
and a variety of Rorschach blots on black magnetic stick-on material. The viewer is invited to take a set of these
words and images and create their own composition on one or more of the refrigerator doors. As with all
public participatory works, there are some treasures which have been posted and some trash which was equally posted.
A closer look at the five refrigerator doors hanging on the wall. Some of the phrases and sentences read across all five doors,
so look for those phrases which seem to follow along from door to door.
This was a fascinating piece of machinery. Inserting a quarter into the coin box would cause the flashlight lamps
underneath the rockin' and bobbin' ducks (chickens?) to light. After a few minutes the ducks would begin to bob
back and forth. When they bobbed downward, a reflective piece of tape on the hat would interrupt an infrared light
beam, which would then send a pulse to a computer. The computer had every public speech of George W. Bush's
digitized and analyzed so that a random set of signals would trigger the output of a set of words or phrases which
when read as a paragraph, would seem to sound sensible and George W. Bush-like, but which made absolutely no
real sense. The computer would send its output to a set of solenoids placed over an IBM Selectric typewriter keyboard.
The solenoids would energize, a typewriter key would be depressed, and the word being sent would be spelled out on a
typewriter using real paper. At the end of a sentence, another solenoid would hit the typewriter's "Return" key. In
the center of the ring containing the bobbin' ducks was a rotating set of three George dolls, each dressed up in some
absurd costume. I talked to one of the two collaborators on this piece on my first visit to this exhibition. He said that
the ducks represented the random and witless speech writers George had in his employee.
This work, "Afterwords," was the most intriguing and the most playful. The visitor walks in front of a completely green screen. A camera at the
bottom of the opposite wall captures the movement which then parlays into a digitized representation of the person projected on the opposite
wall from a ceiling-mounted LCD projector. As the visitor moves about, dances, leaps, jumps up or down or sideways, the digitized image
is joined by words which drift down from the top, linger, and then dissipate into the green background. New words come floating down from
the top of the screen, moving one's hand toward the word will cause it to hover, shimmer, and move about following the hand. These are
three separate images trying to capture my motions in front of the camera.
Here are four more snapshots of me dancing or wriggling in front of the screen. The words at the top are difficult to make out because they
were constantly moving - in fact I'm actually surprised that I was able to capture anything in front of "Afterwords." Engaging.
That's it for the city and CoCA images, below are some shots from the 'hood.
The afternoon clouds as viewed from the computer desk in my studio. I ain't kiddin' when I say that looking out the
window at times is mesmerizing.
From the tower, a view of Blake Island, Puget Sound, the Kitsap Peninsula, and the snow-clad Olympic Mountains. If I ever get to thinking
I want to see the "whole" enchalada, all I've got to do is climb the spiral stairs to the tower and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by a
thousand-square-mile view.
Not to be outdone by something so pedestrian as an ocean's reach between mountains (the Sound), the majestic volcano Mt. Rainier raises
it's potentially-dangerous self above it's mile-high protectors - the Cascades - and peers once again down on the five million humans who
live in its reach.
This is a "day" - "night" view from the tower. Bright, cheery, blue and speckled with brilliant shades of green in the daylight, the same place
transforms into a glowing and magically lit retreat as the sun wanes and the clouds set in. Ever moody, ever changing, ever engaging.
And so be it for views from the Northwest for now.
Later...
Chas
It's one of the more interesting areas to crawl around because mixed in with these other establishments are half the city's media giants. The Times and KING-TV are both located in Cascade. The P-I, KOMO-TV and KIRO-TV are just barely outside the neighborhood and are all three congregated near each other in what is either north Belltown or south Uptown (south South Queen Anne) - sort of a "no person's land" - really just like Cascade.
Which is why I would like to rename this whole area "Vulcan." It's the flatlands which were created to give the businesses at the turn of the century a place to plant their factories in easy reach of the railroad tracks to the south and which wander through the area and to the docks on the north on the lake and the southwest on the bay. It's been dug, tons of it removed to make way for these developments and helping create Harbor Island, and it's been re-purposed a handful of times as the city grew around it and new uses were required for this parcel - roughly three oddly shaped square miles.
Why Vulcan? Vulcan was the Roman god of fire. He made tools for the other gods. Vulcan is also the name of Paul Allen's real estate and development firm. Paul Allen would like to turn South Lake Union into one of the planet's densest and most productive bio-engineering and genetic research campuses. The "Hutch" (as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is called locally) is already blasting forward in a number of areas and has nobel laureates on its staff. The neighborhood very likely will get a three-or-so mile long modern trolley system coursing through it - and connecting to the existing trolley and the coming monorail and light rail where all these lines cross at the north end of downtown - Westlake Center and Stewart Street. The facilities and shops and collections of human endeavor located in the South Lake Union area could easily be construed as "tools for the gods." The individuals and organizations which call Cascade home provide some of the best fodder for the rest of us here in the city. New ideas, new products, new services. This part of town is an in-city laboratory for the practice of evolving urban spaces and evolving urban work practices. Whereas formerly there were shipwrights on the south shore of the lake, now there are still shipwrights and maritime service companies (as in old) but also media outlets and outdoor recreation and creative enterprise product and service establishments. Soon there will be a large-acreage lakeside park which will try and integrate Lake Union into the fabric of the area with an esplanade south to Mercer Street. There are even plans to turn one of the city's worst and most congested, accident-prone, hard-to-cross thoroughfares (Mercer) into an esplanaded boulevard.
I believe all this will happen. There's a lot of political weight behind these moves. There's a lot of Paul Allen's money and personality behind these moves. All these things will turn what is now a place of great imagination and progress into such a place with a reasonably attractive surrounding. Presently, there's nothing worthy of "seeing" in Cascade with respect to views. It's the flatlands, remember that. It was deliberately made flat by humans and their earth-moving machines of the time. It's probably as flat as one could get something in this hilly, glacier-carved, water-and-mountain surrounded region. The only other parts of town which are as flat are the man-made Harbor Islands and the runways at Boeing Field and Sea-Tac. So, in my mind the name Vulcan applies also because it's almost as if Cascade is the remnant caldera of a volcano - flat and encircled.
So, here I was walking from Pike Place Market area, down the back way - Western Avenue - toward Belltown so I could traverse Belltown and enter Vulcan from the southwest. My destination was CoCA - in the heart of Vulcan, and meandering along Western and then Denny Way and then Dexter allowed me to capture the feel of two distinctive neighborhoods - but capture that feel along the boundary conditions - where they met. One can find mystery and allure in almost anything. Schlepping around the city I'm always looking for that odd element which seems either out of place or deliberately placed in some juxtaposition.
The photos below show some of what I found along with images form CoCA's "Help Wanted" exhibition.
I mentioned that it was gray and drizzly, it was also foggy with these fog banks moving
southward at a fast clip - perhaps 15 miles per hour. Watching downtown for a minute
or longer would let one see buildings appear and disappearing -
like an airplane flying into and out of clouds.
The same with the Space Needle. This particular moment the saucer
part is obscured, but in less than half-a-minute, it reappeared. This kind
of weather is actually very invigorating to be out and about in.
It was also raining and not, the way weather works around here. One minute it's clear and
dry, the next it's foggy and a chill has arrived, the next it's actually dripping liquid from the sky,
and then something else comes along. Not enough moisture to "wet" one and if you don't
mind being damp all the time, it's great fun and good for the skin and sinuses, too!
My trek began at the edge of Victor Steinbrueck Park which is a grassy area just west of the Pike Place Market buildings. The
park gives a great view of the back of the market, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and downtown, and not shown in this view, but, also
of the harbor area and the rest of Elliott Bay. The top floor of the three-story yellow building left of center is street level at First Avenue.
Looking in the other direction from the same Steinbrueck Park overlook. The harbor is on the left with the Aquarium and other dockside
attractions lining the waterfront. The penisula across the bay is West Seattle. Victor Steinbrueck was almost singularly responsible for
rescuing Pike Place Market and all the historic properties from a planned destruction at the hands of a planned development. Now, it's
the icon and poster child for viable city markets in the U.S. It also clears close to $100 million a year in combined sales of its vendors,
merchants, farmers and fishers, and artists and craftspeople. Plus, it's a tourist magnet making it a "must see" for people watching.
The corner of Bay and Western has a condominium on the southeast
corner. It's an area of new condos, new shops and restaurants, and
fancy architectural service organizations. It's technically Belltown.
Belltown has taken upon itself to produce some of the city's finest
urban and public art. Below are the grating covers for the lower
level garage of the complex.
Above, a set of four metal sculptures posing in front of the fresh air vents to the condominium's indoor parking garage.
Here's another set of four metal sculptures adorning the residential condominium complex at Bay and Western.
Most of the actual units would have views facing Elliott Bay or the rest of downtown. Some would have views of
the Space Needle and other landmarks. Spiffy, in-city, living.
From the top left and going clockwise to the bottom left, these are images taken looking south
along the alley between major streets on Denny Way starting with the alley between First and
Second Avenues (top left) and ending with the alley between 6th & 7th Avenues (bottom left).
The only exceptions are the center two bottom images, which are of the south and then north
sides of the monorail guideway down the middle of Fifth Avenue. The rest of the streetscapes
are up alleys looking south toward downtown.
This is the first city park and is at the corner of Denny Way and Dexter Avenue, called Denny Park. Denny Way is on the right, and
Dexter Avenue is in the left. From here it's about a three-block walk straight through the park to REI's flagship store. It's also just a
two-block walk to CoCA along Dexter. The park also contains the headquarters of Seattle's Parks & Rec Department. Reminds
me of the National Park Service's National Capitol Parks headquarters set in East Potomac Park. Probably the influence again
of the Olmsted Brothers in both places. To my sense of urban "feel," Washington DC, Montreal, and Seattle "feel" the same.
That's a probable reason why they're my three favorite cities in North America. Surprisingly, Des Moines "feels" the same,
but way, way tinier. Kind of like the Micro Toy version. That could explain my high regard and respect for Iowans. That
and their acceptance and gracious accommodation of the Amish in the Amana villages.
Looking west along Denny Way, this is the Group Health building at the corners of 6th and 5th Avenues and
Denny Way. In the early 1970's, when I lived on Capitol HIll and worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, this
was the P-I Building and the main entrance was right in front, on the corner of 6th & Denny. I used to park my bike in
the back, under the monorail guideway and on the other side of the street from the P-I, on 5th Avenue. The
P-I globe was then exactly like it looks in the picture above. The P-I moved down to Elliott Avenue a decade
or so ago and moved their globe with them. The new building has great views out over Elliott Bay and is
a gleaming and well-done, tasteful, modern glass-and-steel structure in shades of blue reflective glass - which
enhances the blue of the P-I globe. I worked on the third floor, the floor above which has the overhang. I worked
in the city room and we had views looking east over Capitol Hill, the U-District and parts of Lake Union. At the
time we all thought we worked in the "Daily Planet" building. That was definitely one of Seattle's "cool" periods.
Across the way from the park is a new office, retail, residential development. Rock Memories
has a corner location facing Denny Way - a busy passer-by location for both cars and
pedestrians. It's a rock memorabilia store - T-shirts, posters, mugs, pins, clips, stickers and
decals.
The view from Denny Way into Rock Memories' window. It's not that large an interior but
it is filled to the rafters with stuff. I'm presuming their market is the outgoing flow from
Seattle Center and the Experience Music Project, both of which are mere blocks west of
here.
Nearby, on Dexter Avenue, is KING-TV's off-site parking lot. I was bemused by the subtle differences between the parking slots for
"employees" and "guests." Notice that the employees get to park amidst flowers and plantings and the guests get to park against
a concrete wall.
Every now and then some vehicle has a sticker, decal, or slogan which catches my eye.
This was on the doors of two white Ford F-250 trucks which had been outfitted with a
serious mobile laboratory sitting in place of the truck's usual truckbed. I'm guessing they
use snakes and moles equipped with infrared, ultraviolet and normal light imaging systems.
I was saying how flat Vulcan is. This is at the corner of Thomas Street and Dexter Avenue. Lake Union is toward the middle of the image.
On the right the hill in the distance is Capitol Hill. On the left the slight rise in the street elevation heads toward the slowly rising Aurora
Avenue, which in just about two blocks north (behind yellow building) becomes a limited-access highway.
Directly across the street in the view above is this refrigeration company. They apparently have been in this same
location and building since 1937 but have clearly evolved to remain in business. They sell specialty refrigeration
units for stores, restaurants, and the very fancy homes the area seems to also abound in.
A few doors down from the refrigeration company is this showroom for a company which makes really cool folders and briefcases. It's called
"Lost in Luggage" and their folders, covers, and cases look like they combine anodized metal and acrylic. I'll have to go back when they're
open so I can see if what I suspect is their really high price is worth owning one of these things. I'd like to see how easy it is to put papers or
sketches in one of these. They definitely are eye-catching!
One more door up the block is this architectural firm. This whole area is like this one block with some kind of
artsy, craftsy, or creative mechanical endeavor establishment right after the other. Makes for interesting wandering.
Looking inside Swift & Company's offices shows off what is clearly a working architect's workplace. More fun, though,
are the deer leaping across the walls on painted canvases. I was thinking that maybe they remind themselves they're
landscape architects by having the outdoor animals leaping around their offices like this. There were other, smaller,
reminders of the outdoors on the desks and on some of the other surfaces.
And then right in the middle of the block is the Center on Contemporary Art's gallery. The two top pictures show
the marquee in each of the windows which flank the red main entrance. The placard was in front of the door on
the sidewalk. Reminds one almost of a European approach to gallery space.
Stepping back into the street shows how truly narrow an entry-way this is for such a major
exhibition space inside. These old warehouses are great like that because you can't ever tell
which storefront opens into what amount of huge, back-room, space.
Hitting one right inside the front door is this documentary about Ballard&Ballard
- a one-time first-generation cable network wonderkind which combined intellectual
prowess with revolutionary and deconstructionist social theories. The television
show ran for two years and matched up two separate "geniuses" named Ballard
whose own lives were an individual whirlpool of fame, fortune, controversy, and
eventually fall. Both individuals are now "missing" on the planet. This exhibit takes
at least thirty minutes to understand but if committed, the time is well worth it if for no
other reason than an intricate tour back into time - the time warp covers the 70's and
80's with nuggets and detailed sociological analysis which covers events and people
most of us have never heard of. My take on the "meaning" of the documentary is that
these two geniuses, whose lives were a twisted set of fates and malapropos congruencies,
are representative of "America" at large and the path and fate of the Ballards might just
as easily have been that of any American. Their lives were not that atypical of the rest
of us - except for.... and that's the draw of the exhibit.
Occupying a large space and intricately assembled with amazing attention to engineering detail (balancing
a sofa on the end of a table itself on top of a chest-of-drawers) is "The Estate of Beverly Thomas." This woman
lived to be 95 years old and this exhibit shows off her life with recorded interviews playing over digitized 1950's
pictures on vintage 1960's television sets and radios. Each of the thousands of items was part of her estate and
tells a tale of part of her life. And since most of this stuff was collected in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, the exhibit also
tells a part of the lives of the rest of us. Anyone who sees this will recognize at least one artifact from Beverly
Thomas' estate as something from their own childhood or young adulthood. Now if all this could somehow be
reduced to a 3-D hologram and fitted on a DVD - that would be a record of someone's life Absolut reductio.
One of the interactive exhibits is called "Freud on Ice" and is represented by these five refrigerator doors (hanging
on the wall) and this one lying-on-its-back full refrigerator. The work uses hundreds of magnetic "words" or "phrases"
and a variety of Rorschach blots on black magnetic stick-on material. The viewer is invited to take a set of these
words and images and create their own composition on one or more of the refrigerator doors. As with all
public participatory works, there are some treasures which have been posted and some trash which was equally posted.
A closer look at the five refrigerator doors hanging on the wall. Some of the phrases and sentences read across all five doors,
so look for those phrases which seem to follow along from door to door.
This was a fascinating piece of machinery. Inserting a quarter into the coin box would cause the flashlight lamps
underneath the rockin' and bobbin' ducks (chickens?) to light. After a few minutes the ducks would begin to bob
back and forth. When they bobbed downward, a reflective piece of tape on the hat would interrupt an infrared light
beam, which would then send a pulse to a computer. The computer had every public speech of George W. Bush's
digitized and analyzed so that a random set of signals would trigger the output of a set of words or phrases which
when read as a paragraph, would seem to sound sensible and George W. Bush-like, but which made absolutely no
real sense. The computer would send its output to a set of solenoids placed over an IBM Selectric typewriter keyboard.
The solenoids would energize, a typewriter key would be depressed, and the word being sent would be spelled out on a
typewriter using real paper. At the end of a sentence, another solenoid would hit the typewriter's "Return" key. In
the center of the ring containing the bobbin' ducks was a rotating set of three George dolls, each dressed up in some
absurd costume. I talked to one of the two collaborators on this piece on my first visit to this exhibition. He said that
the ducks represented the random and witless speech writers George had in his employee.
This work, "Afterwords," was the most intriguing and the most playful. The visitor walks in front of a completely green screen. A camera at the
bottom of the opposite wall captures the movement which then parlays into a digitized representation of the person projected on the opposite
wall from a ceiling-mounted LCD projector. As the visitor moves about, dances, leaps, jumps up or down or sideways, the digitized image
is joined by words which drift down from the top, linger, and then dissipate into the green background. New words come floating down from
the top of the screen, moving one's hand toward the word will cause it to hover, shimmer, and move about following the hand. These are
three separate images trying to capture my motions in front of the camera.
Here are four more snapshots of me dancing or wriggling in front of the screen. The words at the top are difficult to make out because they
were constantly moving - in fact I'm actually surprised that I was able to capture anything in front of "Afterwords." Engaging.
That's it for the city and CoCA images, below are some shots from the 'hood.
The afternoon clouds as viewed from the computer desk in my studio. I ain't kiddin' when I say that looking out the
window at times is mesmerizing.
From the tower, a view of Blake Island, Puget Sound, the Kitsap Peninsula, and the snow-clad Olympic Mountains. If I ever get to thinking
I want to see the "whole" enchalada, all I've got to do is climb the spiral stairs to the tower and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by a
thousand-square-mile view.
Not to be outdone by something so pedestrian as an ocean's reach between mountains (the Sound), the majestic volcano Mt. Rainier raises
it's potentially-dangerous self above it's mile-high protectors - the Cascades - and peers once again down on the five million humans who
live in its reach.
This is a "day" - "night" view from the tower. Bright, cheery, blue and speckled with brilliant shades of green in the daylight, the same place
transforms into a glowing and magically lit retreat as the sun wanes and the clouds set in. Ever moody, ever changing, ever engaging.
And so be it for views from the Northwest for now.
Later...
Chas
Posted: Wed - March 30, 2005 at 12:05 PM
Quick Links
Categories
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM