Unfurling a Gesture (The Nature of Persistence)

This artwork was inspired by looking at the waterfront and how nature and the built environment interacts there.  I spent 35 plus years in studios in the Waterfront and Pioneer Square areas, most of them on Western Street and Yesler where I overlooked the now removed viaduct.  This allowed me to really get to know the waterfront, to appreciate its edges, light and the various things that inhabit it.  The artwork incorporates many of these memories as well as allowing the elements such as the light interact with it in different and surprising ways.

This artwork, Unfurling a Gesture (The Persistence of Nature), is a celebration of the nature that perseveres along the waterfront, and an encouragement to pay attention.   The title is a verb, rather than a noun, because I believe the interaction with this artwork should be active, not just a looking at an object, but actively thinking about what it is, how it is, how it interacts and changes the environment and how we perceive it.  It does not assume to be a single idea, but it could be how one perceives it.  It works with the memories and experiences of the viewer to become something of their interpretation, their way of seeing, not mine.  I learned something as we were installing it and folks were commenting about it.  Each had a slightly different impression of what it was.  I had started with the idea of a fern, because I had seen a fern  growing out of a crack in the concrete wall on the site as I was thinking about the concept for this artwork.  That was my initial inspiration.  However, other folks had different and very interesting interpretations about what they were looking at and that made me see the breadth of what is possible…and that I could not predict what that interpretation might be.

The artwork along the bridge is also an unfurling, a revealing as one walks along it.  It is a combination of the fern and a bird wing, perhaps a gull wing, perhaps another type of bird, also an important presence on the waterfront.  The 2 layers visually shift as one walks, revealing and hiding, sometimes showing a visual relationship, sometimes becoming abstract. During the day and at night, depending upon the light, the angle of the sun, the lack of sun, we can see different relationships between the layers.

Location: Union Street between Western Avenue and Alaskan Way