Sculpture park is an art treasure

SEATTLE – Seattle has world-class theater. Seattle has world-class music. On Saturday, the city opens its world-class outdoor sculpture park.

The Olympic Sculpture Park is a 9-acre chunk of recaptured public land that works on so many levels.

It has majestic pieces of art that surprise and delight.

It’s an open space where architecture and nature combine in concert.

Its design is bold and inviting, giving visitors a terraced trip along a zigzagging path of sweeping views and native plants.

“It’s layers,” said Marion Weiss, who along with partner Michael Manfredi designed the park. “It’s unfolded and unfolding landscape that suddenly becomes a beach.”

The beach, at the end of the path and another high note for the sculpture park, is restored near-shore habitat for foraging chinook salmon.

Though it’s getting to be that there are fewer and fewer reasons to leave Snohomish County for entertainment, the Olympic Sculpture Park is reason indeed.

The park, at 2901 Western Ave. in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, will be welcoming visitors from all over for the first time Saturday during its grand opening weekend. These two days are packed with free festivities such as music, dancing, art demonstrations and circus acrobats.

Certainly, the park itself will be the main attraction.

The $85 million Olympic Sculpture Park represents how crafty design and skillful planning can allow beauty to intersect perfectly with function. Not only does the park launch Seattle’s waterfront to a world-class level, it’s also a “green” project that salvaged a toxic piece of property and gave it back to the people, complete with an eccentric arrangement of art.

The land was vacant for years as the discontinued fuel-transfer site for Union Oil of California. In 1999, the parcel was bought in a partnership between the Trust for Public Land and the Seattle Art Museum, which will manage the park.

The park’s Z-shaped design leads visitors on a 40-foot descent over four-lane Elliott Avenue, railroad tracks and through four diverse ecological environments.

Visitors can begin the trek at PACCAR Pavilion, made of stainless steel and mirrored glass, which has a public event space and a cafe above a parking garage.

Along the path toward the beach, visitors will pass the artwork. Richard Serra’s “Wake” is five identical pairs of curved 14-foot high, acid-washed steel forms, evoking the idea of tidal waves with profiles of a vertically flattened “S.” The piece also evokes a feeling of seclusion which will only be enhanced when the nearby sequoias grow larger.

A distant train whistle adds to the eerie experience.

Alexander Calder’s gigantic pointed and curved piece called “Eagle” rises 40 feet from the ground and marks the park’s midway point.

Some of the art is functional. Louise Bourgeois’ surreal “Eye Benches (I-III)” are oversized eyeballs carved from black granite which can be used for seating.

Teresita Fernandez’ “Seattle Cloud Cover” acts as just that – a place where visitors can be somewhat shielded from the elements while looking through saturated color photos sandwiched between laminated glass. The artwork is integrated into the park as a bridge that provides access over the railroad tracks.

At the park’s waterfront finale, which gives visitors access to Myrtle Edwards Beach, another resting spot can be had at artist, furniture maker and architect Roy McMakin’s sculpture “Love &Loss.” The piece includes benches, a reflecting pond and illumination from a 24-hour revolving red neon ampersand.

One of the last stops is the greenhouse. Inside, any firm concepts of what constitutes art definitely come into question.

Mark Dion’s interactive piece is called “Neukom Vivarium.” This is a 60-foot nurse log around, under and on which hundreds of living things – fungi, plants and insects – exist. The log is from a 150-year-old tree that fell during a windstorm. It’s there in its 80-foot greenhouse representing the forest ecosystem and acting “as an ambassador for the forest,” Dion said.

Is it a laboratory, a classroom, a greenhouse or art? “It’s a hybrid space that challenges those conventions,” Dion said.

There’s no glass separating the log and visitors. Like the rest of Olympic Sculpture Park, it is open to the public from dawn to dusk every day.

Arts writer Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.

Paul Warchol photo

Olympic Sculpture Park on the Seattle waterfront, looking roughly to the south.

Paul Macapia photo

Richard Serra’s “Wake.”

Soundview Aerial Photography and Weiss/Manfredi

An aerial view of Olympic Sculpture Park, looking south.

Benjamin Benschneider and Weiss/Manfredi

Looking north, Olympic Sculpture Park with PACCAR Pavilion (at right) and Mark Dion’s “Neukom Vivarium” (at left).

Benjamin Benschneider and Weiss/Manfredi