Food & Drink
New Public Art Installation in South Lake Union
South Lake Union sprouts a new urban forest
By Seattle Mag December 18, 2014
This article originally appeared in the December 2014 issue of Seattle magazine.
This time of year can start to feel like you’re trapped in a crinkling vortex of wrapping paper with “Jingle Bell Rock” on repeat. But with his new, permanent work of public art, “There Is Another Sky,” New York artist Spencer Finch reminds us to slow down and look up.
The only artist commissioned to make a piece for the 9/11 Memorial Museum in NYC (a stunning array of 2,983 shades of blue titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on that September Morning”), Finch is a master of light and color, and of transporting viewers to another time and place. In this case, it’s a peaceful day in the forest. Commissioned by Vulcan Inc., “Another Sky” is a glass ceiling suspended four stories above a walkway between two Amazon buildings in South Lake Union, stretching the length of the block between Westlake and Ninth avenues. Pressed between the two layers of glass are translucent circles in different shades of green. The result is a walk in the woods, deconstructed—that feeling of moving through a green cast of filtered light, of looking up and admiring the dappled tree canopy.
The boulder-like benches beneath are warmed, so you can sit a spell—and you should.
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