The Urban Landscape…

Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’

Seattle’s 2010 Maritime Festival includes world’s biggest tugboat races,  a workboat parade, chowder cook-off and a lot more free family fun.  Read more….

Seattle Public Library

 Gotta love Seattle for its street art and sculpture.  Of course, there are some who say the buildings themselves are works of art…take our Seattle Public Library as an example.  The building is quite unusual and walking through it is an experience in and of itself.  But more about that in another post….

Urban life, city streets, architecture and art,  cracked and broken sidewalks, trees and flowers:  These are just a few of my favorite things to photograph.  I thought I would share a few photos here of Seattle.  We are so very lucky to live in a city with an abundance of art right out on the street.  I sometimes think Seattle has more street art per block than any other city I have visited.  I have even overlooked, on occasion, art until I have walked passed it and suddenly realized the art was incorporated right into the structure of the building I was passing. 

Take for instance the entry to the building on the corner of 2nd Avenue South and South Jackson Street.  The building houses the Metro Transit Offices.  The gates that form the entry to the building are also the security gates when closed at night.  They are named the Rainforest Gates (painted steel) created by Jean Whitesavage and Nick Lyle in 1999.

Rainforest Gates

Piece of the Rainforest Gates

The plaque for the gates says,

the imagery used in the forged steel is taken from the plants and animals found in Pacific Northwest rain forests.  Hundreds of pieces of iron work are woven together to express the beauty and harmony of the web of life, alluding to the process of co-evolution that brings billions of individual creatures together in the intricate dance that we call an ecosystem….

The artists think of their sculpture as a kind of visual poetry; rather than simply imitating nature, they create artwork that speaks the language of  living things through the medium of steel.  It is one of my favorite pieces to shoot as it reflects the light differently depending on the time of day I am there.  It is a fun piece of art.

Some cities can bring out the best and the worst in people. Seattle is a such a city. When the sun comes out, people on the street smile more. When the sun goes away, there are not so many people out on the streets and they are usually not smiling. When I moved to Seattle, we immediately moved into Belltown. I was taking my dog for lots of walks while exploring the eccentricities of Belltown. What I then noticed was that gloomy or sunny, when people looked at my dog, they began to smile. He became my goodwill ambassador and eventually the inspiration for the business of travel, TopDawg Travel.

 This blog was to become his documentation of travel through the urban landscape. Of course, I have to be his copy editor, since his typing is marginal at best. While I may have to travel, and write about travel for him, he is still my inspiration for the effort. He still makes the people on the street smile as they pass us.

The Urban Landscape has become a pet project for us. Seattle has so many works of art all sitting out for every passerby to enjoy. I often wonder if we don’t notice them because they are always there. For 2009, no matter where we travel, we are going to document the works of art we hurry past.

Since art is defined by the eye of the beholder, it will be interesting to see if readers of this blog will choose to contribute their interpretation of art and suggest places and pieces of art to be included in this documentation. You can send your interpretations of art to art@theurbanlandscape.com .