July 22, 2004
Giving voice: Student art project celebrates community activism
“To be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.”
— Edith Hamilton, writer and educator, quoted on the public art project “Give Voice”
It’s meant to be a place of reflection or of expression — you decide.
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An area to read and consider words of protest and public debate, or to think up some of your own and get them off your chest. Sort of like a local version of the famous Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park. In fact, there are megaphones all ready for use.
Or maybe it’s just a place to sit and think about it all. Again, you decide. It seems unlikely that there is a wrong answer.
No matter the definitions, the smoothly rusted steel structures in the strip of land between Schmitz Hall and the Visitors Information Center comprise a public art project called “Give Voice,” entirely conceived, built and installed by undergraduate and graduate UW students. They gathered from various artistic disciplines for a spring quarter class called Design-Build Studio, otherwise known as Art 332.
The project sprang from the multi-million-dollar improvements to University Way last year. The budget included about $25,000 for sidewalks along the site of the art project. For this reatively small amount, the student artists installed the entire public art project, plus sidewalks.
Enough money was left over to allow the Seattle Department of Transportation to commission the class of students to create sidewalks for the space, between University Ave. and 15th St., and the idea of the public art grew from there, participants say.
The students worked with that small budget and a time window of 11 weeks — a mere instant in the long-term world of public art. In that time they met with a community committee of merchants and others, discussed ideas for how to fill the space, designed and created the pieces and installed them on June 10 with a public ceremony. It was public art with a low budget and a high-reaching theme, done in a relative hurry. The students and their teachers are pleased with the result, especially given their time and budget limits.
“I think it’s one of the best Design-Build projects we’ve ever done, and we’ve done six of them,” said John Young, a professor of sculpture in the art department and one of three faculty who oversaw the class of 32 students. The other faculty members were Jim Nicholls, a lecturer in architecture and industrial design, and Nhon Truong, a lecturer in landscape architecture.
“We had a great faculty team, and at the same time ended up with a piece that was the most artful of all and had the most social and political punch or edge to it,” Young said.
The pieces that make up the display are two circular, 12-foot steel tables, one upright and the other overturned, on opposite sides of the area, with a podium and two megaphones in between. Along the sides are steel benches, and underfoot is gravel, with a decorated, winding sidewalk meandering through the space. The upright and overturned tables imply successful and failed communication, respectively. Perhaps, that is. But — you decide.
The steel pieces each bear a quote, either cut into the backs of the benches or applied, in raised-letter handwriting, along the lip of the huge tables. The quotes — chosen from 200 to 300 choices in all, Young said — range from Seattle-area voices to those echoing throughout history. Quoted are former student activist Thom Gunn, writer Julie Emery and the Seattle WTO protestors (“Whose streets? Our streets!”) as well as John F. Kennedy (“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” is one of his two quotes), Erich Fromm, Confucius, Mahatma Gandhi and others.
The quotes, and the art project itself, center on one general theme, said student artist Catherine Anderson, who will be a senior in the fall. “The original idea for the piece was to encompass the idea of political protest and how individuals can come together.” She said with so many students involved, some compromises were made along the way, “but the overall concept never really changed.”
For her part, Anderson had fun getting to apply raised lettering to the tables edges with a process called “mig welding,” which she described as being “kind of like an enormous glue gun.” She said the welding took some teamwork. “We had big slabs of steel, two pieces that were half-circles, and the lip of the table was a kind of curved piece of metal in the shape of a half-circle, too,” Anderson said. “But I couldn’t weld sideways because the metal would drip, so we had to lift it up with a forklift and I had to climb up on a ladder, and every 10 or 15 minutes we had to get a bunch of strong boys to hoist it left or right.”
Richard Andrews, director of the Henry Art Gallery and a member of the committee that reviewed the student art ideas, said the project was “on-the-job training, as it were, for those interested in learning about public art and design.” Praising the project for realizing the community committee’s wish for a gathering place, and for working within the allowed scope, Andrews said, “It’s a teaching and learning situation but it’s a real-life situation, too … they created and built the work given all the limitations of a small budget and a short time period, and on a fairly difficult site.”
Perhaps few compliments could be as potent as Andrews’ comment that from his vantage point at the gallery, he sees people actually using the space. “From day one, I’ve seen people out there … sitting on the benches enjoying a sandwich. In fact it’s not a bad little space — and it’s a good argument that spaces like that can be more significant public places if you add some good public art design to it.”
Young said the project owes thanks to the Seattle Department of Transportation for allowing the concept to get started in the first place, and in particular he notes city employee Rob Gorman as being “the visionary patron saint” behind the project.
He said, “The parameters were to simply create a sidewalk and do a public art environment, and he gave us tremendous freedom for which we are extremely appreciative and grateful.”
And finally, here’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson says, at least according to the quote on the steel podium: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
The megaphones and seats are ready for someone to step up and do just that.
