Temporary Sculptures for a Sculpture Park
January + February, 2018
Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA
Ideated with Eric John Olson.
Temporary Sculptures for a Sculpture Park was devised while in residence at the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park. During the residency artist Eric John Olson and I conducted participatory research with people visiting the park and conducted interviews with museum employees including security guards, groundskeepers, and the bakery owner of the park cafe. In response to these community dialogs, Eric John Olson and I created a series of temporary sculptures and participatory events that invited visitors to deepen their relationship to the park and the people who care for it through collectively embodied prompts.
The temporary sculptures consisted of a tent from which to view the sky on a rainy day, weather balloons to aid in awareness of the wind, and a re-creation of directions from artist Grace Hwang’s project “take comfort”. The words GIVE, TAKE, and COMFORT are embroidered on three bags that now are a part of the museum’s collection for the play area. The additional temporary sculptures took the form of instructions for participants, which when enacted the participants create temporary sculptures in the park.
All of these sculptures were activated and embodied during a tour of the sculpture park which featured activations of the sculptures in the museum’s permanent collection, our temporary sculptures, and stories of people who worked at the park. Contributors included Bobby and Joe who are in charge of landscaping and groundskeeping, Oscar who has an amazing bakery in the pavilion, and a number of security guards.
Temporary Sculptures for a Sculpture Park was generously funded by the 2018 Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park Winter Residency and a grant from the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation.