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Public Art: The 25 Best, Oddest, Freest, Most Obscure Pieces In Town

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Stronghold, UW campus, NE Pacific St. at 15th Ave. NE.: The original UW campus downtown was once covered with old-growth timber, as was its present location when the school moved north in 1895. Now, as that institution continues its inexorable sprawl south of Pacific Avenue toward Portage Bay, New York artist Brian Tolle reminds us of that arboreal past with his recently installed Stronghold. It is, at first glance, nothing more than stump on a manicured lawn. Walk closer (sprinklers permitting), and you�ll see that it�s a constructed stump, an invented artifact made of inexpensive cedar slats. Measuring about 23 feet in diameter�with a seating area within, bring your lunch�Stronghold suggests the enormous tree trunks that once drove this region�s economy, that helped establish the city and our state�s first university (founded in 1861). But such towering cedars and firs are all gone, of course, and Tolle�s materials are of the size and grade you could buy at any lumber yard. This neo-stump stands next to a new UW bioengineering building on�appropriate, since technology is the new timber of the Northwest. In shape, the irregular ring also echoes our skyline of ancient, crumbling volcanoes (Mount St. Helens in particular) that were formed in violence. The installation recreates our local history before it met the crosscut saw.

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There's a wealth of accessible, interesting, and sometimes even important public art far beyond the border of SAM's waterfront compound (or even right next to it). No single collector or institution governs these far-flung sites and installations, which include freely viewable art sitting on private land. So set your Google waypoints en route, as we tour some of the best pieces of public art (plus a few lost, overlooked oddballs) in and around Seattle, some of which are so undersung, they don't even have a placard identifying them. Read Brian Miller's entire story.

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Comments (7)

Pete 05/03/2009 7:38:08 AM

An excellent, eye-opening article. I'm planning an "art walk" trip to see all these pieces for myself. My only quibble is not providing GPS co-ordinates as a download from the website. Great work! Please keep alerting your readers to the art possibilities around them. -Pete-
Fitzychick 05/02/2009 2:20:32 PM

Thanks for giving this one a name and settling an ongoing dispute between my husband and me. He -- apparently correctly -- says the blades are bamboo. I see tapeworms.
Michael Dare 05/02/2009 2:14:18 PM

Where are the dance lessons in the sidewalk?
Jack 05/01/2009 5:13:16 PM

I'm not usually a fan of abstract art, but I like this one. In this case it is all about the placement, I LOVE how it frames the Space Needle in your photograph. It gives the structure that added visual element it would lose if seen with a neutral background or wall of a museum.
Ina 04/30/2009 8:25:09 AM

this is an absolutely great article. Beautifully written. Will refer to it next time I'm poking around Seattle.
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