Last Wednesday afternoon at the 619 Western building, fat daubs of oil paint sat out on palettes, barely drying at all in the unheated air. The artist, a Vietnam vet, sat in the room—high ceilings, one wall all windows revealing the industrial red cranes of the working waterfront behind the curve of Seattle’s dilapidated viaduct—and told stories.
He told about that uncommonly beautiful year in Saigon, where he had a Vietnamese girlfriend he shared an apartment with on the sly. About discovering in 1981 this abandoned warehouse, at 619 Western Avenue, with rice and coffee beans and dust strewn everywhere, sitting right at the base of the Seattle street that coined the term “skid row.” His studio is dotted with mosaics using colored glass collected from buildings that have been demolished in Pioneer Square over the years. One night recently, asleep in his studio—where he’s slept and eaten without heat or private running water for 30 years—one of his own windows broke mysteriously, like a premonition. He never found the big shard of 100-year-old glass that fell. Ever since then, there’s been only air between his bed and, across a narrow street, Seattle’s original post office and steam plant with its black smokestack still rising.
On the floor directly below this was another artist telling stories—everybody was feeling nostalgic, because less than a month ago, the artists of 619 were told they’re being evicted in March 2012. Some have already jumped ship, scrambling to get what affordable studio space is left in the city before it runs out. Others want to protest but wonder whether they should apply for the relocation assistance money that may be available from the government—which is taking applications this month already—since it’s the city and the state that say the artists have to be out, the 100-year-old building demolished, to make way for the underground tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
“This is one of the oldest all-arts buildings on the West Coast,” said Johnny O’Brady, an artist on the fourth floor. “There’s a good chance the tunnel won’t even happen, but people are already packing up. There’s tons of confusion.”
The confusion comes from the fact that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) told the building owner about the eviction six months ago, but he didn’t tell the artists. The artists found out in a meeting that was advertised with only a few days’ notice—and by the time the meeting was held, the “public comment period” for the tunnel’s environmental review process had already lapsed. In reviewing the environment, the state left out the heart of the heart of Pioneer Square: the artists.
O’Brady is a generation younger than the Vietnam vet. He wears combat boots and remembers SoHo in the ’80s. His stools are made of skateboards broken into halves; he sat hunched over the floor, which was covered in canvases depicting the faces of old-time pinup girls. There were so many canvases that he had to step on them. It was the day before art walk—the city’s original art walk and still its biggest, the one that has been held the first Thursday of every month in Pioneer Square for the better part of 50 years. Pioneer Square’s art walk is said to be the oldest in the United States.
The 619 Western building is not about sheer ambition. O’Brady is not about to be on the cover of an art magazine, and only some of the 100 or so who rent at 619 Western are “about to be” anything at all. They simply are artists. Occasionally they sell something. Maybe they teach this month, wait tables on the side, or have an entire modest daytime career. (This raw place does not attract anyone accustomed to wealth.) But no matter what else is going on, they make pictures and objects within these walls and show them every month—and that alone makes 619 Western, for lots of people, the best part of the original American art walk.
After the white cubes of the commercial galleries close at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., everybody heads over to 619. The floors creak, the elevator is painted steroidal eggplant colors (and contains a blurry painting of the Cheshire Cat), and closing time is unknown. The nearby Tashiro Kaplan Artists Lofts building was developed in 2004 as a replacement for 619, but it is a qualitatively different place, containing galleries and hosting open studios only once a year. At 619, in spades, is what every museum and gallery wants just a dose of: messy, living art energy.
The art is all over the place. It runs down the hallways and staircases. You can show anything: Japanese animation drawings, dour geometric abstraction, black-and-white photos of your mother, garish paintings of lecherous old men being breast-fed tequila shots by naked green women. That latter scene is meant to be a satire; it was made by an older artist called Johnny Wow!, who’s been at 619 for several years, and all of his paintings are, well, like that.
The longest-running tenant is Edd Cox, who’s been at 619 since 1981. He makes highly skilled photo-realistic paintings of flowers and people in old-fashioned cars, and he also makes looser, New Guinean–influenced scenes he calls his “jazz” style. Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, a founder of the Capitol Hill gallery/collective pun(c)tuation, rents here; so does street artist Weirdo, whose latest project (made possible by a small grant and Weirdo’s cheap rent at 619) is a mural wall available to emerging artists that spans the length of a city block nearby, across from the historic Smith Tower. The businesses at Second Avenue and Yesler Way, including contemporary art gallery Howard House, have closed. The giant mural—vibrant orange, yellow, green, blue, and red—is the only thing lighting up the block besides the crackheads.
The 619 building has one non-art tenant in the upper floors where the studios are (the first of the six floors, available for retail, bears multiple FOR LEASE signs). The non-art tenant is the U.S. office of the Tibetan Nuns Project, an international nonprofit run by the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law that’s supported Tibetan nun refugees in India for 20 years. Just outside its office is the crack, inches wide, that runs down the center of 619 Western and that widened during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake; in some places, you could pass a kitten from one floor to another through this crack. The building has settled in parts; spray-paint cans roll toward wavy, slumped windows. Firefighters who were visiting the building once told the Tibetan Nuns staffers that in case of fire, the wooden stairs and the fire escapes (not firmly attached) should be avoided, and advised them instead to jump out their fourth-floor windows. They laugh when they tell this story; they would rather take their chances than move to someplace duller than 619.
If you did jump out of 619, you might see the name “SU JOB” in cornflower-blue letters on your way down. Job was a redheaded artist and the soul of 619 for more than 15 years before she died in 2008 of cancer at age 52, and her name is stenciled on the building; also tattooed in out-of-the-way places on 619’s skin are names like “CRIS BRUCH,” another beloved Seattle artist.
It’s a typical story: What makes 619 special is what makes it vulnerable when accountants, engineers, and bureaucrats come around. The tunnel is set to kill the living, breathing organism that is 619 Western.
The city council could intervene, but it has shown scant interest in doing anything but pushing the tunnel, even though voters rejected a downtown tunnel in 2007. After being contacted by the artists, a few council members visited the building recently. Tom Rasmussen, chair of the council’s Transportation Committee, said he was not able to go and has never been to the building but is planning to meet with the artists soon. “We want to help,” he said. But he had no specifics yet, and he recalled the deeply discouraging situation at Magnuson Park’s Building 11, where 24 artists were kicked out in 2008 to make way for a commercial development in the public park.
Even though the environmental impact study is still incomplete, WSDOT signed contracts with a construction company for the multibillion-dollar project on January 6. O’Brady went to the signing. He raised his hand and asked that the artists be considered part of the environment. The ink dried anyway. WSDOT didn’t respond to an interview request for this story.
Pioneer Square is a federally named historic district, eligible for strict protections. But the “council has blown us off again and again,” said Cary Moon of the People’s Waterfront Coalition. “It’s maddening because it’s not like they have to do anything controversial or difficult. They just have to hold WSDOT accountable to the laws that have existed for this purpose for decades.” At the very least, “the city should demand from WSDOT that even if the building is demolished, the use is preserved” through funding or other support, Moon said.
The same environmental study that buried the pending displacement of a hundred artists also buried the fact that an additional 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles will flood downtown streets, including Pioneer Square, because the tunnel will have no exits north of King Street and will have tolls up to $4 each way. “The tunnel project could destroy Pioneer Square in several ways,” Moon said. “The interchange [at King Street] is huge,
suburban-scaled, and completely out of context with this fine-grained fabric.” The state says this is the city’s problem; it certainly is. The council has no money and no plan to deal with it.
The plight of the 619 artists is the first symptom telegraphing who’s going to bear the brunt of the city’s failure to protect and envision Pioneer Square. If the council won’t do anything, an angel would have a legal case against WSDOT, said attorney David Bricklin. “Oh, yeah—WSDOT has been trashing the environmental law in their rush to get this project done. I think they’re very vulnerable if somebody mounts a timely challenge.” The state is prohibited from even choosing a tunnel—let alone displacing artists and signing contracts—before the environmental study is complete.
Will anybody stand up for the misfits of 619?
“Getting to be here has been an honor,” said Carl Faulkner, who with his girlfriend, artist Redd Walitzki, shows his own and others’ works in curated group shows in their 619 studio. When they moved in, the manager told them they could do anything besides throw a couch out the window. That had happened before. Anything else, he said, goes. 
Perhaps if you can’t make enough money supporting yourself as an artist, you should do something else. People who make art can’t be treated differently in society, where would you possibly draw the line?
Yes, my bad, business is the ONLY thing in the world. That is why the world is in SUCH GREAT SHAPE THESE DAYS. The artist community I live in is also in danger because the buildings owner made bad financial moves and is losing the property. The country I live in is in danger because the previous 10 owners made bad decisions and is falling apart. The world I live in is in danger because the entire business system is collapsing so tell me, HOW IS BUSINESS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ART? Everything is crumbling away not because of artists and designers, but because of greedy BUSINESS ethics. Corporations not giving a fuck. Yeah, CALL ME A FUCKING HIPPIE, a despot, a bum, whatever, at least I have the heart, soul, and DIGNITY to know what a good, moral decision is.
FUCK YOUR MONEY.
And chew on my dried leathery colon.
@52: I hope all of that blaming doesn’t make your beret crooked.
I like historical buildings and would find this a reason to preserve a space, but the rest of Seattle is finally undergoing a major price relaxation, because the housing bubble peaked later here due to people moving from other states. Prices for other buildings should be going down. My friends live on the other side of the stadiums, and there are actually plenty of vacant spaces around, even if it wouldn’t be a full colony.
Moreover, downtown Tacoma is becoming more and more attractive to move. Take a visit and maybe the people there can benefit from art
Im sad this place is disappearing, but maybe part of that is that people like me didn’t hear about it until now. I support the arts, and have been bored by the usual art walk bit; I think this would have been interesting to me. In other cities, the underground still tries to speak to people outside their immediate circle. Not so much in Seattle.
@52: Ohhhhh, they’re busting out the capital letters. How convincing! What a strong argument you have!
Artists love to tell me how “challenging” their work is. Well, with a few simple posts, I’ve probably gotten more of a reaction out of you than 99% of the milquetoast crap that passes for Art in this world.
“HOW IS BUSINESS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ART?” Ask that question next time someone you love needs health care. Or when you experience actual, real hunger. Not “should I have Indian or Thai tonight” hunger.
“The artist community I live in is also in danger because the buildings owner made bad financial moves and is losing the property.” Sooo… perhaps money just might be important, eh? And not in an “evil greedy business” kind of way, but in a “money makes my nice art community possible” kind of way? “Irony” is your vocab word for the day.
“Everything is crumbling away …” Emotional hyperbole. We live better than most kings ever did.
“Yeah, CALL ME A FUCKING HIPPIE …” I never called you anything. You’re the one shouting insults.
“FUCK YOUR MONEY.” Go ahead. Flush it down the drain. Stop paying rent to those greedy assholes. Burn your clothes. And in six months, you’ll be standing on the side of the freeway, holding a dirty cardboard sign and giving me dirty looks because I won’t give you booze money.
@48: “If the fiction called money stopped tomorrow …” You can despise it, but it’s certainly not a fiction.
“Very simply you are someone terrified and angry with the fact that someone found a way to make a life more interesting and rewarding than yours.” Ahhhh, I love this part. I disagree with you, so suddenly I’m soulless and angry and blah blah blah. The sneering taunt of the romantic. Bullshit. You don’t know shit about me. All you know is that you hate me, and that you want to tear me down.
@53: High fives.
#36: “News flash…ARTISTS are working people, too.”
Then the conflict is resolved. Artists do not deserve artificially cheap (subsidized) housing or workspaces. If artists want lofts, then they, as “working people”, can pay for them.
Now dry those tears.
Totally into the story until accountants were mentioned as art-killers. Seriously? Amazing article, but keep away from the stereotypes. Otherwise you’re just as guilty as those who think artists don’t deserve the building they’ve been inhabiting simply because they’re artists.
Totally into the story until accountants were mentioned as art-killers. Seriously? Amazingly informative article, but keep away from the stereotypes. Otherwise you’re just as guilty as those who think artists don’t deserve the building they’ve been inhabiting simply because they’re artists.
Let’s be honest, plenty of businesswomen adore legitimate artwork. And plenty of businesswomen are the people who purchase art from artists. So I’m not quite sure why we’re often labeled as the collective death of art in general.
Money is what counts, baby. And I’m taking it with me. And when I do, I’m gonna shit nickels down on your heads.
Ah, yes. The scourge of the mediocre “artiste” – someone who actually wants to do something valuable with the space required, and having to deal with a jerk of a landlord.
To be sure, I believe WSDOT is embarking on a beautiful performance art piece. It’s called, “Get real digs, you entitled art-school dropout fuckwits, and then maybe you’ll sell actual art to actual people.”
Look, I’m not saying people don’t have some seriously good art. However, I’m watching Jen Graves cheerfully ride to the rescue of an “artist’s colony” in the Muedede style of socialist reformer. There is no colony; just cheapass rent in a building downtown with crappy parking and a guy who, let’s face it, does “art” for art’s sake in a room with no heat and no running water.
I can tell stories, too – of how I spent a beautiful summer riding Percherons and heavy draft horses over the fields behind redheaded girls, of how I watched authors of the Vietnam era who’d slowly cooked their brains in low-grade acid daily for twenty years don masks of Native Americans that one of them “envisioned” on his “spirit quest” when he was driving around the country in a bus that was almost always on the verge of breaking down, of seeing the moon rise in the Sahara with a Tourareg friend over heavy sweet spice coffee, of masturbating into the batter of a cookie I baked and sent on to a very cute girl.
See? I can tell stories too. But I can also get up off my fucking ass and put some goddamn saran wrap over a broken window in the wintertime. For fuck’s sake, if the dipshit can’t put a bloody piece of plywood over the window, I’m not sure I WANT his stupid ass to be parked in the building.
“For fuck’s sake, if the dipshit can’t put a bloody piece of plywood over the window, I’m not sure I WANT his stupid ass to be parked in the building. “
YES, YES, YES, YES, YES.
From a positive perspective – Tacoma DOES need some uplifting artists to move into the area. …and these people aren’t really entitled to the property – seems like they shouldn’t even be IN the building.
Just using that “logic” thing.
Otherwise, it actually sucks more for Seattle. Seattle should tear down the piece of shit Alaskan Viaduct and take a queue from San Francisco on how to rebuild a beautiful and even MORE vibrant waterfront (hint, cars should be a secondary priority, people the first priority)
@59: See nuh_uh’s comments; a lot of people who buy-into money as an end unto itself (“Money has done more to sustain life than all the art ever made.”) are condescending pricks who believe that because they’re engaging in behavior that our seriously dysfunctional social-economic system rewards with lots of money, they’re Right and everyone else is Wrong. Certainly not everyone in business, accounting, etc. is this way, but almost by definition people who view money as an end don’t view it as a means to, say, purchase art. Also, the people who tend to be most successful at exploiting our seriously dysfunctional social-economic system are people who care about money at the expense of everything else, so Business as a whole tends to be the enemy of anything not conceived as an optimal profit-making endeavor (e.g. most art, environmental conservation, knowledge for its own sake).
So many trolls: it’s like the doll shelf in my bedroom circa 1992.
@65: More ad hominem attacks. And as usual, in the passive-aggressive language of the liberal.
“… but almost by definition people who view money as an end don’t view it as a means to, say, purchase art.” Most people view money as the means to their survival. Surviving, or even thriving, is the central goal of every being.
Only when basic needs have been satisfied can a being spare the energy for art. Food, clothing, shelter — business makes all of this possible, on a scale that provides for billions of people. It’s not perfect, but then no human endeavor is. And yet you show naked contempt for this.
I reject the narrative that art is something that self-nominated “artists” do. Everyone who creates, who puts some of their effort and skill and creativity into, is *doing* art. The notion of “artist” separate from “the rest of the sheep” is an elitist, self-serving idea. Read some of the other comments above — a lot of people have contempt for this elitist idea, and especially the idea that self-nominated artists deserve some kind of special break (cheap housing), that the rest of us uncool people somehow don’t deserve.
“So many trolls …” So disagreeing with you means I’m a troll? Hardly. You just can’t accept that someone doesn’t think the way you do. Which is exactly what you accuse me of. Which makes you (yet another) lefty hypocrite.
I just read (I know, I know- it was at Crosscut, but still) the WSDOT estimates the cost of saving this building at $30 MILLION DOLLARS!
Evidently the way the pilings supporting the foundation are done, they have all rotted out, and it would require an incredible, expensive effort to replace them while the building still stands above.
I have no doubt that, after the landlord got his $30 million improvement, rents would go up, and the artists would get the boot anyway.
Spend ten percent of that on funding artspaces, individual grants, and helping set up artist co-ops.
If we really cared about artists, we would do more projects like the TK building, where artists get permanent live work spaces, and subsidized gallery spaces at street level.
I’m a creative artist and writer, who lived happily in Seattle for six years. I know a lot of artists there, so I’d like to wish all of the artists being inconvenienced by this big move much success.
Moves are great! You heard me right. I’ve moved around a lot in my life and have found each new door I’ve opened full of great new adventures, surprises, and life experiences.
I’ve recently moved on from Seattle to Southern, California, and now onto NYC, where I’m totally loving life. If anyone there is thinking about NYC as a possible place to move to- I say yeah- do it! It’s so great here for artists and you can still find affordable rents if you’re the frugal searcher like myself. I’d be happy to give you more information if you contact me. http://www.youtube.com/gioleedy
Change for any artist is fuel for the soul. I’ve never been one to call any place my home forever. I’ve felt it very important to fuel my creative talents, by keeping my life as simple as possible, remaining as mobile as possible, staying flexible, and keeping an open mind towards new ideas, insights, experiences, people, and places.
By remaining open and continuously moving on as I have, I’ve experienced great growth both personally as well as an artist. I’ve also had tons of fun and excitement in my life, have never been bored like most people (it seems), and keep creating new things.
Fear is always the hardest thing to deal with when moving. Whenever I want or have to move on, I ignore those fears, think positive, pack my bags, and leave. By knowing that I’m off to start my next big adventure, I’m always raring to go.
As an artist, I’ve felt it very important to keep it all simple. When I moved here to NYC, all I brought with me was my luggage! I also think it’s very important to remain very frugal and always look for the cheapest rent possible.
Looking for cheap rent has often landed me in areas that are soon to be up and coming.. where if I stayed too long, I’d be forced out due to rising rents and such. Honestly though, I’ve never really stayed too many places long enough to experience much of that, but some of the old funky places I’ve lived are certainly now major yuppie high rent areas.
Whenever you’ve got cheap rent it’s great. Enjoy it, but you’ve also got to accept the fact that it’s probably not going to last forever. Cheap rent rarely does.
I realize that it can be scary for some to move on, especially if they’re not used to moving as much I do. But I assure you that there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of about moving. Like the saying goes, nothing to fear except for fear itself.
My advice is to ignore whatever fears you have about moving on, venture out to find that next cheap place down the road or across the planet, and go start your next big adventure. Whatever you do, have fun, keep your heads up, and good luck!
A note on Bldg 11 in Magnuson Park.
24 artists weren’t kicked out but ‘caved’ to what was a clever and crooked move on the part of the developers.
I never stopped paying rent and I’m still there now after more than a year of these ‘developers’ taking control of the bldg. They’ve yet to do anything with the space which was my fear all along:
Say they’re moving in and by stating that possibility, then half the artists mass exodus b/c it’s so hard to find affordable creative space.
Once everyone’s gone they can make the claim that the bldg’s falling apart (which is wholly untrue) and just sit on the land and bldg until the market turns around collecting their tax breaks and subsidies on 40 year leases that will have them putting less money into the bldg than we already put into it every year by the residents who’ve yet to exit.
Come to bldg 11!
I like the angle of the article, even if it is as old as usury itself. Art professors or “sacred clowns,” or whatever you like to think of archetypal “teachers,” should teach students the importance or real estate, even though it doesn’t matter to the art anymore than a frame or “frame story” will make shit smell better.
“Money is what counts, baby. And I’m taking it with me. And when I do, I’m gonna shit nickels down on your heads.”
As 60 above said. That’s the kind of bitterness it takes to stay angry enough to succeed when you have even lost the urge to be an artist. Why live? Indeed, why try? These artists need to be taught a lesson; Romanticism died with Goethe.