Odes to Fremont Bridge abound

That first day in the tower, Kristen Ramirez wasn't sure whether she wanted out.

"It was equal part of 'What the hell am I doing?' and 'This is the coolest place I've ever been.' "

Cool, as long as she keeps the windows open. Ramirez is spending the summer in the northeast tower of the Fremont Bridge, where the space is small, but the possibilities are wide open.

Ramirez, 38, is an artist-in-residence, in charge of a $20,000 public-art project funded by the city of Seattle's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

She is using the 13- by 8-foot space in the tower as a studio in which to capture what the Fremont Bridge means to people, and to create a sense of place.

"So many people's identities are wrapped up in a place," she said. "They have a heavy load of nostalgia and memories and experiences, and my job is to uncover that."

Everything is material. Sound recordings of buses passing over the grates, and boats honking to the bridge operator. The alarm bell as the gates go down, and the click-click-click of the mechanism that raises and lowers the bridge.

"It reminds me of when I was a kid on a log ride or a roller coaster," she said of the sound.

Ramirez also noticed the strange silence that settles while cars and bikers watch the bridge rise and lower again.

One of the requirements of the grant is that Ramirez engage the public, so she has opened a phone line (206-455-9983) where people are invited to call and leave their memories of, or thoughts about the bridge.

One man called to tell the story of "Divin' Ivan," whose surefire hangover remedy was to jump off the bridge.

Ramirez has also put together "The Fremont Bridge Quiz," which she passes out at the weekly Fremont Sunday Market.

The quiz asks for, among other things, three adjectives to describe the bridge; one piece of advice for it; and a personal metaphor about it: "My relationship to the Fremont Bridge is like that of a blank to a blank."

"A blood cell to a heart valve," one person wrote.

"A husband to a wife," wrote another. "You can't do without it, usually think it's great, but occasionally frustrates me."

"A hand to a cookie jar," someone else wrote. "Sometimes I'm gettin' through there and others not."

She also asks for a "quick and simple" drawing of a hypothetical logo for the Fremont Bridge.

One person drew the bridge opening, and Jesus or God rising out of the water. (Fremont is the Center of the Universe, after all.)

Ramirez is taking it all in.

"I have so many ideas," she said.

Her project will culminate in a temporary public art project in the neighborhood in August. It could be a lecture, an exhibition or performance ... Ramirez isn't sure just yet.

Nor is she sure how she even got the gig. The call for the job was geared toward video and sound artists, while Ramirez works almost exclusively with paper.

"I'm pretty low-fi," she said. "But I have always done work that defines a place, so I think that helped."

She was trained as a printmaker and got her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington. She is an adjunct professor at The Pratt Fine Arts Center and Cornish College of the Arts, is married to an architect and has an 18-month-old son.

Three days a week, Ramirez rides her bike down the Burke-Gilman Trail from her home in Ballard, and spends the day in the tower, only leaving to use the bathroom and Wi-Fi at nearby coffee shops.

The tower doesn't have either, "so it's a little like camping.

"But look at this!" she said. "All an artist ever wants is time and space, time and space, time and space."

In return, Ramirez will make beauty of our ups and downs, and the strange quiet in between.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Nice to see the neon Rapunzel

at her level.