On Tuesday, Marcie Sillman of KUOW <a href=”http://kuow.org/post/imagine-art-these-seattle-grain-silos
“>reported about a woman who wants to put art on the grain silos at Pier 86 in Seattle. Her name is Betty Winfield. As Sillman said, “One day she looked at the 68 grain silos that dominate the skyline and thought to herself, ‘We can do better than this!‘”
The next night, at a public meeting on the idea at the Olympic Sculpture Park near the silos, Seattle artist Iskra Johnson took “ruthlessly objective notes,” and posted them to her Facebook page.
An excerpt:
My main reason for going was curiosity: Why do this? What’s wrong with the silos the way they are? The founder of Friends of Pier 86 has done a finding and concluded that they are dirty, and have mildew and rust. They also look “like something from the Midwest”, and do not express the “DNA or sense of place” of Seattle. They are a blight, and are offensive to look at, particularly to people coming in on cruise ships.
We looked at many pictures of what other cities have done. The projects fell loosely into two categories, “Put a (Big) Bird on it” and “Sophisticated Global City Looks Hipper Now.” Some of the projects were quite frightening, and several, particularly those involving light, were dazzlingly beautiful and gave me pause.
The initial presentation didn’t mention anything about what the silos actually do, so Johnson asked, and found they “take in the huddled masses of soybeans and corn from the beige, mildew-covered and grubby Midwest. The cargo is then placed on ships for export.”
In breakout groups, people suggested “Native American art, performance, art that recognized the contributions of labor, something epic that would put us on the map with the ‘muralism’ movement, an educational component, and ‘general cleanup,'” she wrote.
What do I think?
“They just want prettier silos,” Sillman wrote.
I doubt that anything worth the name art would appear on silos rented and operated by an international commodities corporation and surveilled by Homeland Security, in the name of prettification. I don’t think this is going to happen, and generally speaking, I don’t think this is how good art happens. I could be wrong.
But what do you think? You can take a (quick, free) survey. Another meeting is expected in a few months.
