♪♪
It's time now for NARF, Neighborhood Adventure
Ramble with Friends...with your host, Jed Dunkerley.
Hey there.
Welcome back to NARF, it's been a while.
We are here today at perhaps the most
Seattle-y place in Seattle, the Seattle Center.
But we're not here to go to the Space Needle.
We're here to look at some public art.
There's a lot of new additions,
there's a lot of underappreciated marvels,
and there's a lot of hidden gems
to be found, and along the way,
you can learn a lot about local history and animals.
Who can resist? Don't resist.
Let's go take a look.
♪♪
We're here at Gloria Bernstein's "Neototems".
You probably know it as the whales.
But have you ever wondered why are they here?
I mean, whales are great, but why are these whales here?
There's a reason.
You see, in ancient
times, there's a Native American myth
that there used
to be an underground spring that connected Elliot Bay
with Lake Union that whales would swim through.
Now, you got to imagine whales probably were in Lake Union
at some point. And you wonder how?
Nobody's found this ancient spring.
But they have speculated that pre locks, pre ship canal,
whales could have ridden
a high tidal bore all the way up into Lake Union.
But you didn't know that.
But these aren't the only whales. There's another one.
Let's go see if we can find it.
♪♪
Here we are next to the Children's Theater, and look,
the rest of the whale, it's the tail.
Now, originally, the installation was supposed
to feature a whole pod of whales, but it was cut short.
But they brought Gloria Bornstein back
seven years later to finish the job.
And this is actually a fountain when it works.
But whales aren't the only things you can find
in this garden.
There's plenty of other friends if you
look around.
♪♪
All right, here's one of my favorites,
right here in the corner by the box woods.
It's the octopus strewn on a rock.
It looks like it was left here by the tide.
It doesn't look happy.
But I love it.
♪♪
All right, what we got?
What?
How long've those been there?
The answer: since 1962.
Actually, they've been right here
in front of the Phelps Center
since 1974, gift of the government of China
for their participation in the World's Fair,
right here in Seattle.
A different time.
♪♪
We're here in the courtyard of the Cornish Playhouse,
looking for a sculpture by one of the great Pacific
Northwest sculptors,
James Washington Jr., part of the Northwest school
contemporaries to Mark Tobey and Morris Graves.
He's got a sculpture in here somewhere.
Where is it?
My gosh.
It's a
barbet, relative of the toucan.
What is it doing here, covered up in greenery?
This guy's a legend.
I mean, he just had his his fountain of triumph redone
and put up with a statue of him by Barry Johnson
at the corner of 24th and Union.
He's a Seattle legend.
And his his work is here hidden, forgotten.
But now you know. See if you can find it.
♪♪
Okay, continuing on the theme of local history
and animals, here we are in front of the brand
new Climate Pledge Arena
at a really cool installation by comic artist Megan Kelso.
Now this is called "Crow Commute". You can see
crows in the background of all these panels.
It starts out with this central panel
from time immemorial and celebrates this area from
the '60s to the present with these little vignettes.
Here we are at a brand new sculpture
by Climate Pledge Arena called "La Diab Pish",
which means the Devil Fish.
And it's in honor of our newest professional
sports team here in Seattle,
a little local history, the Kraken.
It is the octopus by local artist
Preston Singletary and David Franklin.
To finish up our tour of local history,
we sort of come to the end and the beginning.
This is an homage to particle colliders
subatomic physics by local artist Norie Sato
called "Chikara No Hikari," which means light of power.
And I just love that in front of our sports arena,
whereas other cities
would have statues to local sports heroes,
we have an homage to particle physics.
All right. Well, to wrap up.
Whereas most public art,
you kind of
got to get on the internet and do some research yourself,
the Seattle Center
makes everything really easy for you
with these map-y kiosks things they've installed.
There's one here by the fountain.
Another one over by the Space Needle.
All you do is pull out your phone
and click on the QR code and you can pull up your own map.
It's not working.
But for you, it will.
And, you know, enjoy.
Go out there and see what you can find.
It never hurts to look.
So until next time, keep NARF'n.
Have fun, see what you can see.
♪♪
Catch Art Zone Friday nights at 8
and anytime online at seattlechannel.org/artzone.