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Public Arts Program
2005 Projects
Dragonfly Pavilion and Dragonfly Garden
28th Avenue SW and SW Dakota Street, West Seattle
Artist: Lorna Jordan
2005
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The Dragonfly Pavilion and Dragonfly Garden, designed by artist Lorna Jordan, were developed in conjunction with SPU’s Longfellow Creek Drainage and Habitat Improvement Project in West Seattle, part of former Mayor Paul Schell’s Urban Creek Legacy Project/Millennium Celebration. The project to restore Longfellow Creek included Jordan, artist-in-residence at Seattle Public Utilities in 1997 and 1998, on the design team for the Project Master Plan that explored and identified ways to include artworks that illuminate the design and work of SPUs’ drainage control and urban creek restoration efforts.
Dragonfly Pavilion is the entrance feature to SPU’s Longfellow Creek Drainage and Habitat Improvement Project and serves as a creek overlook and outdoor environmental education facility. The artist-designed Dragonfly Garden, which surrounds the pavilion, is a landscaped area demonstrating salmon friendly and water-wise gardening techniques and is crucial to SPU’s mission and educational message at the site. A large sculptural dragonfly is poised over the seating area, signifying the restoration of the Longfellow Creek watershed’s environmental health over which SPU has stewardship responsibilities because of its drainage and Combined Sewer Outflow (CSO) control activities. Also at the site is the Adams Fish Bridge artwork that crosses the Longfellow Creek and provides an opportunity to observe this natural resource; its form in the shape of a salmon is also symbolic of SPU’s creek restoration efforts at this site.
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Sensitive Chaos/Lincoln Reservoir-Cal Anderson Park
11th Avenue E and E Howell Street Capitol Hill
Artist: Douglas Hollis
2005
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Artist Douglas Hollis worked with the Berger Partnership and other design team consultants to develop a master plan for an urban park created from the replacement and “hard –covering” of SPU’s Lincoln Reservoir in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The covered reservoir enhances drinking water quality, provides increased security and now allows for a park with graceful walkways and plantings. To remind visitors of the existence of the subsurface reservoir, a Seattle Public Utilities drinking water facility, the design team conceived of a large central water feature in the new park. The water feature points to the history of water at the site and demonstrates its various properties in the four elements that comprise it – Source (the cone), Flow (the trough), Texture (the texture pool), and Reflection (the reflecting pool). The artist clad the cone with granite cobbles that activate both visually and aurally water cascading over it, while flow diverters in the trough allow visitors to interact with the running water. Both the sight and sound of the water help visitors to experience and see one of our city’s most precious resources – water.
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Seattle Scatter Piece
Bitter Lake Reservoir, Laurelhurst Playfield, Beacon Hill Reservoir, 23rd Ave W and W Gilman
Artist: Mark Lere
1981-1992 and 2005
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In 1981, Mark Lere proposed a project that would locate pieces of art at five sites around the city by overlaying a simple line drawing of a boat on a map of Seattle, generating the shape and concept of this work. The five principal points (the bow, and front and rear corners) fall on City-owned sites. At each location, a different sculpture employs the boat shape as its fundamental form. The boat form resonates with the maritime and water-imbued environment of Seattle. The four completed sculptures: a drinking fountain that provides water to residents, a viewpoint at Interbay, and two sculptures located at SPU’s reservoir properties (Beacon and Bitter Lake) require a complete "voyage" through all districts of the city to see the artwork in its entirety.
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Longfellow Flora/Longfellow Creek Trail Identifiers
Three miles through Delridge to Roxbury Park, West Seattle
Artist: Peter de Lory
2005
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The Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail is a “ribbon of connection” running along the creek through West Seattle neighborhoods, businesses, public green spaces and communities. Created in partnership with many departments including Seattle Public Utilities (responsible for drainage, Combined Sewer Outflow, and related creek habitat improvements), the trail marks Longfellow Creek along three miles through Delridge. The City commissioned artist Peter de Lory to create trail identifiers to mark the trail. The trail markers, porcelain enamel blade signs, show digitally manipulated images of flora photographed by the artist at Longfellow Creek. Five different images placed back-to-back are repeated in various pairings, creating a modulating system of sign-posts that mark the route of the trail and the creek. The trail identifiers employ images of the creek’s natural elements to help the public understand the resource that is Longfellow Creek.
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