John T. Williams Mural - Capitol Hill

A mural of John T. Williams on Capitol Hill is painted on a garage door at approximately 1524 11^th Avenue near Purr Cocktail Loung. John T. Williams was a seventh generation Native American Carver who was shot by a Seattle Police Officer Aug. 30^th 2010 for carrying a carving knife and a piece of wood while walking down the street. The mural features Williams’ wizardly visage straddling the world of the verdant forest with towering trees and the gray concrete of the city where trees are replaced by freeway support pillars.

Capitol Hill Light Rail Murals

Baso Fibonacci - Untitled (top left), Kelly Lyles - Cal Anderson Portrait (top right)
Tim Marsden - BOOM! (bottom left), Cameron Larson - Caps for Slats (bottom right)


The future site of the Capitol Hill Link light rail station is currently surrounded by a red construction wall and will be for several years. While we wait for the new transit stop, Start, Sound Transit Art Program is using the wall as a venue for an exhibition of temporary public art featuring rotating installations. We photographed only a few of the installations. Each installation has its story, and interviews and videos of each are at the startwallproject.blogspot.com site.

Artists/Works:

Baso Fibonacci – Untitled
This huge (135 feet long x 24 feet) Baso Fibonacci-designed mural is on 10^th Avenue East at the corner of East John Street. The untitled mural includes a self-portrait of the artist that, according to a video interview, represents frustration. Below is a photo of what stood in the location of the mural before demolition for the mural began. (Image from Google Maps.)

Kelly Lyles - Cal Anderson Portrait
Cal Anderson (1948 - 1995) was Washington’s first openly gay state legislator of the 43^rd district which includes Capitol Hill and the namesake of the adjoining park. (The original park, Lincoln Reservoir Park, was another Olmsted Brothers designed park. In a previous post we talked about the Dunn Gardens which was also designed by the Olmsted Brothers.)

Cameron Larson - Caps for Slats
This work is composed of some 7,000 beer bottle caps arranged and screwed into a section of the Broadway-facing wall surrounding the site. It is an 8 foot by 8 foot portrait of the recently departed Capitol Hill icon, Chris Harvey aka "Slats".



Tess Martin - The Whale Story
This mural is the site of the animated film of the same name, retold in paint on 16 foot high wall. The film is based on a true story of a whale caught in fishing nets and eventually freed by humans.

Tim Marsden - BOOM! - Is That All There Is?
This mural is inspired by the Peggy Lee song of the same name. The mural imagines what it would be like to experience a real-life (cartoon) explosion, complete with a big boom and flying debris.

 

Nicole Bernard, Jess Rees - Mapping Capitol Hill
Two local history buffs serve up facts about Capitol Hill’s past, complete maps and timeline that show the layers of history that go into making the neighborhood. A section of century-old planking is tacked up on the wall. It was found 38 feet below present grade near the Paramount Theater on Pine Street during the construction of the extension of the light rail tunnel from downtown to Capitol Hill.

Specs one - Watching Emeralds
An homage to the Emerald City, by Seattle’s own hip hop super-hero.

Nicole Bernard, Jess Rees (left), Specs one (right)

Kristen Ramirez - Spin a Tale, Emerald City
This installation invites you to create your own formula for thumbs up or thumbs down.

Evan Blackwell - Somewhere Between Here and There
While not our favorite installation, it is inspired by our favorite artist statement: “At the very core of my research is a desire to create a harmony between the reality of my urban existence and my own personal ideology. My goal is to reinvent much of my surroundings both philosophically and physically in order to experience a more fulfilling life.”           

Evan Blackwell (left), Kristen Ramirez (right)

A Window in the Wall with Travelmarx Reflection (left), Capitol Hill Wall Project (right)

Piece of the Wall Near Call Anderson Park (left), A Peek At the Tunnel (right)

Walking the Fibonacci Mural

Marino Marini - Piccolo Cavaliere at Portland Art Museum

We ran into Marino Marini again in the Portland Art Museum. We keep running into Marini. I remember the first time we saw his iconic horseman facing the Grand Canal at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 1998.  We then spent an afternoon at “his” museum in Florence in 2007. Later we saw another horseman piece at the Getty Center in 2010.

We went to the Portland Art Museum to see the Rothko Exhibit and afterwards took a stroll through the other parts of the museum and spotted this Marini horseman. This piece is called Piccolo Cavaliere (“Little Horseman”) dated 1949. The bronze piece is 34 3/8 in by 15 3/4 in and is in the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, 1^st floor.

Binomen Art – Helleborus

Helleborus Spelled Out With Flowers and Leaves  
We talked about this Helleborus hybrid before in Soholm Blue Series and Helleborus. In May - June we remove all the old blooms and some of the old and new leaves to keep the plant in order. The spelling of Helleborus is from the flowers and a few leaves minutes before going into the compost.

Helleborus in the Yard: Shaggy Plant (left) and Layers of Spring Green with Helleborus (right)

A Visit to Dunn Gardens

Looking East Over the Great Lawn (top left), Magnolia acuminata (top right), Perennial Border (bottom left), Section of Fujitaro Kubota Garden Near Bayley Residentce (bottom right)

The Dunn Gardens is an example of a summer estate created by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm for clients in the Pacific Northwest. According to HistoryLink, Dunn Gardens is one of 140 private gardens designed by the Olmsted Brothers out of 200 in the Northwest.

 
The Olmsted Brothers firm was run by John Charles Olmsted (1852 - 1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870 - 1957), sons of the father of landscape architecture, Frederic Law Olmsted Sr. (1922 - 1903). The brothers’ firm grew out of their father’s firm; the word “Brothers” was added in 1898 as Olmsted Sr.’s health began to fade [1]. Frederic Law Olmsted Sr. established the Olmsted firm in 1858 and designed some of the most notable public spaces in the United States including Central park in New York City and the Boston Commons. In Seattle, the Olmsted Brothers seem to have a hand in all the well-known parks (Woodland, Volunteer, and Seward to name a few). They were also involved in the University of Washington Campus and the grounds of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held on the campus in 1909.

Arthur G. Dunn (1861 - 1945) came to Seattle in 1889 and made a fortune in the cannery business. In 1914, Dunn purchased a 10 acre property in the Broadview from his friend John Agen. The two friends hired Olmsted to landscape their adjoining estates simultaneously. Dunn’s estate was to become a summer retreat to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. (Now the summer retreat is just a quick 15 minute drive from downtown Seattle.)

Dunn Gardens offers an interesting perspective on a couple of things.

Aesthetic Encounter: We left the garden with a heightened garden aesthetic, inspired to revamp neglected patches and neglected parts of our modest garden.

Rhododendrons: Our usual encounter with rhododendrons is either that the poor plants are planted too close to a house foundation or the strange clumps of them with gaudy blooms typical of some suburban developments. However, at Dunn Gardens we developed a new respect for rhododendrons. Edward Bernard Dunn (1904 - 1991), son of Arthur, was an accomplished gardener and hybridizer of rhododendrons. There were many rhododendrons at Dunn Gardens that had a scent - a pleasant surprise. Speaking of Ed Dunn, he was the one who left an endowment to preserve and maintain his portion of the estate, with conservation easements to the other two remaining parcels of the original estate, make up Dunn Gardens today.

Robinsonian Garden: William Robinson (1838 - 1935) was an Irish gardener and journalist who advocated for the wild garden or woodland garden as opposed to the more formal Victorian garden designs popular during his life. Dunn Gardens is an example this aesthetic. This woodland garden exhibits sprezzatura: the effortless look of a natural setting as if no planning or hours went and will go into maintaining it.

The tour lasted about an hour and half and consisted of walking the estate with a docent, Tanya, who was happy to share info about plants and the history of the gardens. While there were a lot of spectacular plants that we saw, some in particular to call out are:

• Davidia involucrata - Handkerchief or Dove Tree. Location: Station 14.
• Enkianthus campanulatus - Red Vein Enkianthus. Location: Station 12.
• Lilium martagon - Martagon Lily. Location: various.
• Cladrastis kentukea - Yellow Wood Tree. Location: Station 3.
• Magnolia acuminata - Cucumber Magnolia or Pickle Tree. One of the largest in the state. Location: Station 5.
• Erythronium revolotum - Glacier Lily. A plant that Ed Dunn especially was famous for. Location: various.
• Mahonia x media cultivar. Location: Station 11.

References:
[1] Greenscapes - Olmsted’s Pacific Northwest by Joan Hockaday

Barbara Leede Bayley Classroom (left), Characteristic Olmsted Stairs Uncovered in 1992 (right)


Cardiocrinum giganteum (left), View of the Great Lawn and Magnolia acuminata - Cucumber Magnolia Tree (right)

Davidia involucrata - Handkerchief or Dove Tree (left), Croquet Lawn and Heather Berm (right)

Flowers and Bayley Residence (left), Enkianthus campanulatus (right)

Great Lawn - Plantings Under Douglas Fir (left), Mahonia x media cultivar (right)

Greenscapes - Olmsted’s Pacific Northwest by Joan Hockaday Front (left), Back (right)

One of the Trails at Dunn Garden (left), Enkianthus campanulatus (right)

Rhododendron with Pink Cotton Candy Trusses (left), Unknown Rhodie (right)

The Slat House

Reproductions of Dunn Garden Design in Classroom (left), Trillium sulcatum forma albolutescens (right)