Visual Arts
SAM is on track with works for park

By Matthew Kangas
Special to The Seattle Times

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE LEHMAN MAUPIN GALLERY AND WEISS/MANFREDI ARCHITECTS A glass bridge by Teresita Fernandez will take visitors over train tracks to Olympic Sculpture Park.

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Works donated by local art collectors Bagley and Virginia Wright, longtime SAM patrons (both have been president of the board of trustees), will be re-sited from the museum building and the Wrights' home in The Highlands. These include abstract modernist sculptures in steel by Tony Smith ("Wandering Rocks," 1967), Anthony Caro ("Riviera," 1971-74) and Mark Di Suvero ("Bunyonschess," 1965). A 39-foot-high Alexander Calder donated by Medina collectors Jon and Mary Shirley, "Eagle" (1971), will round out the historical examples.

	COURTESY THE ARTIST AND THE GAGOSIAN GALLERY Richard Serra's 75-foot-long "Wake" is the park's largest sculpture planned so far.

Bagley Wright said "the success of the park will depend on a half-dozen iconic pieces of modern sculpture that people will want to come see. The ones we are giving are major pieces, including two we commissioned for our house, the Kelly [Ellsworth Kelly's 'Untitled,' 1981] and the Di Suvero, his first commission anywhere. Eventually, we're also giving them David Smith's 'Fifteen Planes' [1957] and several others."

With $67 million of the projected $180 million still left in SAM's fund-raising drive (which will fund the park, the downtown museum's expansion and improvements for the Seattle Asian Art Museum), SAM deputy director for art Lisa Corrin said the park's groundbreaking is slated for the spring of 2005.

The guiding vision for Olympic Sculpture Park, Corrin said, "is to be able to accommodate how sculpture evolves as a medium over time and to have ideal display conditions." Building on a "superb heritage of public art in Seattle," Corrin wants the Olympic Sculpture Park to "become a pilgrimage site for all the sculpture of the region, but also be a tabula rasa so artists of the future can respond to the site."

	BAGLEY AND VIRGINIA WRIGHT COLLECTION Virginia and Bagley Wright originally commissioned Ellsworth Kelly's untitled sculpture for their home; they are now donating it to the Olympic Sculpture Park.

The park has been divided by Corrin, SAM preparator Michael McCafferty and the New York firm Manfredi/Weiss Architects into various areas such as "the valley, the meadow and the grove." A new glass bridge by Miami-born artist Teresita Fernandez was also announced today. It will join other newly commissioned or acquired works by several prominent and emerging artists, including Richard Serra, whose "Wake" (2003) is a 75-foot-long mixture of curving steel walls. So far, it is the park's largest work planned.

Serra's works such as "Tilted Arc" (1981) have attracted controversy in the past, as well as vandalism. After a protracted court battle, "Tilted Arc" was removed from its site at the federal office building in New York. Another work the Wrights acquired, "Wright's Triangle" (1979) for Western Washington University in Bellingham, was repeatedly defaced in the 1980s before it was cleaned, restored and re-sited.

	The concept for Mark Dion's "Seattle Vivarium" places a nurse log inside an 80-foot greenhouse to create an installation about Northwest ecology.

Corrin hastened to note that "we'll have great security, and Serra's work is widely accepted today. This is not a government building plaza or a college campus but a sculpture garden that won't compromise Serra's vision."

Mark Dion, a Pennsylvania artist, will make an educational greenhouse that features an evergreen tree log reminiscent of the ideas of Seattle sculptor Buster Simpson. Seating for the park will be made by Seattle furniture designer and sculptor Roy McMakin and an as yet undetermined work by a prominent contemporary Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang, will also be unveiled in 2006.

Local photographer Glenn Rudolph has been hired to create a photo array of the site from documents he has assembled over the past 25 years, along with new photos of the park in progress he is taking now. Corrin considers Rudolph's piece "the most radical of all because people expect sculpture to be an object placed on a site.

	BAGLEY AND VIRGINIA WRIGHT COLLECTION Gifts to the Olympic Sculpture Park from local art patrons Virginia and Bagley Wright include Anthony Caro's "Riviera."

"However, sculpture is also about exploring the meaning of a place, including its history. Rudolph's project will reconnect the invisible stories embedded in the site with the way it will appear when it is transformed into the Olympic Sculpture Park."

With construction delays out of the way, Corrin said, "We're happy to be back on track. The artists have met with the architects so they're as excited as we are. That's the most gratifying part. We're all inspired and moving ahead."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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