Artists are intrepid. They brave poverty, obscurity, and hostility so they can sit alone in their studios and make things out of nothing. It's not a job for wimps. You wouldn't think the prospect of making public art—widely considered, at least in the Northwest, some of the blandest work around—could bring artists to their anxious, quivering knees. But it has. Some of Seattle's bravest younger artists have formed a public-art support group.

These artists are just starting to get into public art, mostly because it's the only steady living around (relatively speaking). The old truth still holds: A Seattle artist can't live on gallery sales alone.

"There's a lot of terrible public art out there," artist Dan Webb says. "We thought, there are a bunch of interesting artists doing this—why don't we just take over public art and do something cool?"

The first meeting of the public-art support group was last August. They haven't followed up (too scared??), so I took it upon myself to propose notes for their next meeting. (The quotations are real.) recommended

(Click to enlarge)