Good SAM

I'm not sure I can quite capture how much fun we had at the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture garden at Olympic Park. The space itself is amazing. The landscaping is a work of art in itself. I don't just mean that the grass is green and the End of Spring wildflowers are charming (though they are). I mean that the pathways and the railings are designed to move you among the sculptures in a way that enhances both your visit and the artwork. Even something as simple as a concrete wall has just the right angles to create a graceful lines. You can almost feel the artist's hand sketching them - and you - into place.

Several of the large installations - particularly "Seattle Cloud Cover" and "Wake" - make the viewer part of the art. As you walk through "Seattle Cloud Cover," light is refracted through colored glass, creating patterns on the gravel and on your body. The whole sculpture is about 200 feet long and becomes a different work with every step. "Wake" is a massive collection of iron ... thingies. They rise up out of the sand like ships' hulls or shark fins. The installation has wildly different looks as you enter, exit, and move among the monoliths. As you speak, your voice becomes part of the art. As the sun climbs and falls, the shadows change the character of the work. It's odd to describe art as thrilling, but "Wake" really got my blood flowing. And don't forget "Capula XVI" and "Capula XVII" - two swinging structures like wicker birdcages, large enough to fit wife and child, perhaps, or four rambunctious children.

AND! To top it off, we happened to visit on a day when volunteers from Rare Care, an organization dedicated to identifying rare plants, had set up half a dozen or so tables with very interesting and well crafted activities. Wrigley donned butterfly wings and pollinated plants, drew a picture of a plant by sense of touch alone, pressed a dozen flowers, examined twenty types of moss with a magnifying glass, and peeked at plants through a microscope. We simply didn't have the energy to participate in all the fun stuff.

On our way out, we passed a collection of photos by Glenn Rudolph. He composed a photo essay about Olympic Park back in '86. The museum invited him to create another collection to chronicle the transformation of the park from a "feral" land to a sculpture garden. The most moving piece was a photograph of a young man who had been living in the park on the day they put up the chain link fence to begin renovation. It's a moving portrait of a homeless man being evicted from his un-home, lovingly crafted by the artist, and bravely published by the institution responsible for his eviction.

Quite a remarkable place; quite a remarkable day.