Regular visits to the Seattle Art Museum sculpture park reveal something new with each visit during different seasons, time of day, weather, light. Late in the afternoon on this autumn day, the light was low in the sky, the Richard Serra garden was falling into shadow.
Richard Serra, Wake, 2004
Olympic Sculpture Park
Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle
I was fortunate to have met Richard Serra on several occasions. The first time, Judy Chicago called Sidney Felsen and arranged for me and Suzanne Lacy to visit Gemini Studio late one night. Mark Stock was assisting Richard at the press. Suzanne and I honored the creative process, knowing well not to interrupt; but observing the artist at work was a singular and rewarding experience. Decades later I viewed the work from the night at his retrospective at SFMOMA with my son and grandson. The next time we met he was in Bellingham considering the site for his piece on the campus of Western Washington University. It was an honor to sit next to him at the dinner the university hosted celebrating him. And it was exhilarating to hear him talk about art history, the importance of artists like Picasso and Pollock. When he returned for the installation of Wright’s Triangle he allowed me to shadow him for several days while he worked with the installation crew. He took an interest in my old German camera, a Leica IIf which was unobtrusive, except for an accessory viewfinder (Vidom) which piqued his curiosity. The morning following the installation and site clean-up I found Richard in deep concentration, observing his newly completed work, looking at the site with pathways to be redesigned. As with any change, and especially something new and bold, it took a while before people learned to love it.
I’d been wanting to visit the sculpture park again for some time, to see new additions to the collection and to revisit works by three of my favorite artists, Serra, Calder, and DiSuvero. I went on a brisk, overcast day just before the new year.
I was reflecting on the first time I saw Richard Serra’s Wake, 2004, just after it was installed. It is first seen from a long distance, from above, and as you approach the work it grows and grows; by the time you reach it, you are immersed within it.
Seattle is fortunate to have a classic Alexander Calder, from 1971, Eagle. It is a sculpture worthy of repeated visits, to see how it captures northwest light in the different seasons and times of day.
It was exciting to see Mark di Suvero’s, Schubert Sonata, 1992, with Eliot Bay as a backdrop. As with all of DiSuvero’s signature work, it is like a drawing in steel, and I look forward to spending more time with it during upcoming visits.
