12 Hours in Seattle

Since I'm cleaning house, photographically speaking, i figured it's time to put up the last of the West Coast trip pictures.  After the lovely week spent visiting Portland and the rugged Washington Coast, we headed off to Whistler, Canada for a week of mountain biking camp.  I was too busy trying not to die to take many pictures of Whistler, and none of them are really worth posting here.  We ended our trip with a day in Seattle.

Or it was supposed to be a day, anyway.  Then i pulled out of the gas station in upstate Washington with the pump still attached to the car.  Such an episode plays out much as you might expect to see it in the movies.  There's a miscommunication between the driver and the pumper, and the driver goes to get some Peanut Butter M&Ms and passes the pumper who historically never leaves the pump in the car, so doesn't bother to look as she gets into the driver's seat, turns on the car, and drives away as the awful thumpy screechy sound happens and you can hear the metal of the top of the hose dragging along the pavement behind the car.  The driver slams on the brakes, which at this point, does no good, but it's pretty much instinct.  Driver inspects fiasco, pulls now-amputated nozzle out of gas tank, tries to casually replace it as hose scrapes along behind her, feels weight of stares of other pumpers as she slinks back into car, tries to hide face as she pulls into a parking space.  At least these hoses are designed to pop off now and so it's not like there was also a massive spray of gasoline that threatened to explode.  Mortified driver drags feet and rest of self into station to fess up to the damage she has done, and thus begins the calls to the insurance companies, etc., at which point she realizes that they will not have a lovely day to meander around Seattle, after all.  And then it started raining, of course.

But in the end, while our day in Seattle became a few hours, all was not entirely lost - some meandering was still to be had, just not nearly as much as had been intended.  I really love Seattle - it's definitely on the grungy side, with a decided industrial flavor, but the art there is phenomenal.  It's like they took all the great civic art projects for all of the US, and plopped them in Seattle.  Then there is the food, which is excellent and relatively inexpensive (although pricey by Portland standards).  It's more upscale than the Portland scene - you can tell Seattle is playing New York to Portland's Philadelphia.  But i love all of those cities, so had a great time wandering about in the rain.

Pike Place Market

 

Olympic Sculpture Park

Seattle's Sculpture Park is right up there with the Nasser in Dallas, only it's spread out across the Seattle waterfront.  There are too many cool sculptures to name, although you can do a tour via the link above.  But a few are worth pointing out.  First, Stinger, by Tony Smith, was just unbelievably cool (to me).  First of all, apparently Tony didn't take up sculpture until he was 50 years old, which gives me more encouragement on taking the intro to metal sculpture class at the Corcoran next semester.  Secondly, Stinger is kind of hidden in this beautiful grove of white birches:

Then you kind of wind your way into the grove, to find this really slinky, seductive, reflective sculpture with an opening inviting you inside:

 
Apparently, the piece was originally titled "One Gate," but renamed after the Stinger cocktail, "which is deceptively sweet but slyly intoxicating."  I wish someone would say that about me.  ;)  Anyway, I love the artist's note that even those "who take the wrong path, will find their way.  It will be the right way, the correct way."  It's interesting that he's alluding to Isaiah 40:4 (Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain), and then kind of makes an allusion to other biblical references - possibly Matthew's admonition that one must take the right path and enter the right gate for salvation and few are those who do so - but flips the admonition on its head (and all the other biblical references about taking The Right Path), by saying that even those who take the wrong path will find their way and "it will be the right way, the correct way."  Which is how it feels getting here - there's no obvious path to it; you pick your own and then you're there.  I love the message - or at least what i think is the message - that in the end, whatever path you take in life is the right one.

Anyway, there are other cool sculptures:

Roy McMakin, Untitled 2004-2007

Beverly Pepper, Perre's Ventaglio III (1967)

Alexander Calder, Eagle (1971)

And then there is my beloved Richard Serra, with the phenomenal Wake, a piece that also requires walking in, around, above, and away from it to get the myriad of sensations implied by the title.

The Seattle Art Museum also has a pavilion in the park, which i thought pretty architecturally cool:

Although nothing in the end was so architecturally fun to me on this trip as the jaw-dropping Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum.  Essentially this project is supposed to be an homage to innovation in music and science, brought to you by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft.  We got there just in time for it to close, of course, but we did ride the one-stop monorail that runs from the Space Needle through the museum to the downtown mall.  The building was designed (appropriately enough) by Frank Gehry, and interestingly enough, lots of people despise it, including the NYT architecture critic who describes it as looking like something that crawled out of the sea, rolled over, and died.  Read more on the history here.  I say some people have no sense of humor.  I mean, what is a museum dedicated to the childhood loves of a massive geek - rock music and science fiction - supposed to look like?  Anyway, judge for yourself:

 

Self-portrait of the artist, wet, waiting for tram

And, since it was rainy here today, too, I close with an appropriate Poem of the Day:

Rain

With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.

Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.

No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I’ve written:

“Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”

The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.

The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.


I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.

If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.

The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.
-Kazim Ali (2005)