Among the countless construction projects currently taking place around the city, the Seattle Central Waterfront Project is arguably the largest and most significant. With an overall budget of $1.07 billion, the project is capitalizing upon the replacement of the Elliot Bay Seawall and the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct as an opportunity for an extensive redevelopment of the 26-block stretch along the edge of downtown Seattle. The vision is incredibly ambitious, with plans for a complete transformation of the area that would connect the Pike Place Market with the waterfront and create a pedestrian promenade of parks and plazas designed by James Corner Field Operations, the firm behind New York City’s popular industrial park, The Highline.
Included in this vision are seven permanent, public artworks commissioned by the Office of Arts & Culture. The selected artists include Salish Coast artist Shaun Peterson, multidisciplinary artist Norie Sato, Canadian artist Cedric Bomford, sculptor Oscar Tuazon, sound artist Stephen Vitiello, eco-artist Buster Simpson and artist Ann Hamilton, whose breathtaking, building-wide exhibition the common S E N S E recently closed at the Henry Art Gallery. Hamilton received a million dollar commission for the waterfront, the largest commission in Seattle history, and there has been much curiosity around her project—and for good reason, given the enormous success of previous works, such as “the event of a thread” at the Armory in New York two years ago.
Each artist will bring a unique perspective to the space, activating different sections of the waterfront with site-specific works, but Buster Simpson’s inclusion among the commissioned artists is paramount, given his long history of public works, actions and interventions throughout Seattle. Many of these projects are in the Downtown and Belltown neighborhoods that the waterfront spans, dating from as far back as his arrival to Seattle in the early 1970s and continuing today, including his First Avenue Streetscape Project (1978–present), Urban Arboretum (1978–present), Tree Guards (1978– present) and Growing Vine Street (1997–present) among others. Simpson’s efforts have mostly been in public and natural spaces, but he recently took his first steps into commercial galleries with his solo show Double Bound at Greg Kucera Gallery, closing May 16. Double Bound includes both new and old works, from industrial assemblages to photographs to a massive, inverted US flag made of black geotechnical fabric. Simpson’s practice is situation- and site-specific, utilizing urban detritus and recycled materials to address issues of urban development and environmental degradation.
Elliot Bay Park (1974). Image courtesy of the artist.
This care and attention to the overlooked and the discarded is evident in Myrtle Edwards Park Proposal from 1974, which operates in the same spirit as his current proposal for the waterfront. Back then Myrtle Edwards was Elliot Bay Park, a dumping ground for the rubble from the construction of I-5. Simpson proposed to redesign the park using the concrete detritus that was already there in an effort to be honest about the site’s and city’s progress and renewal. Buster does not throw out the old to bring in the new, but instead recycles, repurposes and reclaims what is already there.
While his Myrtle Edwards Park Proposal was never realized, Simpson’s commission for the waterfront allows him to follow through on and build upon his vision farther south along the city’s edge. One of the primary goals of the waterfront project is reconnecting Seattle to the shoreline and marine world below the piers including improving the salmon migration corridor along the seawall. Simpson’s work will act as a vital component in reaching that goal.
His efforts will be focused between Yesler Way and Washington Street, collaborating with the designers of the Elliot Bay Seawall Project on habitat restoration through the construction of a man-made beach west of Pioneer Square. According to Simpson, “These urban edges are often a dumping ground for our ruins from earlier times, such as dumped ship ballast, the Seattle Fire of 1889, and indiscriminate rubble since then. My approach contends that rubble is a legitimate riprap for the manufactured beach and forms a historical foundation for which an indigenous landscape can be established.” Fitting with Simpson’s honest and transparent approach in acknowledging humans’ impact on the environment, his project is titled Anthropocene Beach, a reference to human’s influence on earth’s ecosystems on a global scale.
“Secured Embrace” at the Frye Art Museum. Image courtesy of the artist.
Much of the waterfront’s design aims to create a polished, metropolitan boundary where the “Emerald City” meets the deep blue sea, but Anthropocene Beach prefers transparency over polish, acknowledging the history of the site and the complex web of ecological relations between humans and non-humans that inhabit the waterfront.
As part of the habitat restoration, Simpson will be installing root wad/anchor systems on the future beach. Those who saw Simpson’s 2013 retrospective at The Frye Art Museum will recognize these reclaimed tree and concrete tetrapod combinations from his piece “Secured Embrace,” which was placed in the museum’s reflecting pool. Tree rot wads are often used in utilitarian land engineering to reinforce the shoreline. The trees decompose slowly, providing habitat, but the concrete tetrapods are usually concealed underwater. Simpson exposes them, intertwining the manmade and the natural.
Simpson also plans to have a number of the “Anthropomorphic Dolos” (his term for the tetrapods) scattered above the beach as a navigable play and seating area to serve “both as metaphors of human intervention and as an engineered armor and anchor resource.” The dolos will lie in wait until being deployed or repurposed in the future. These interventions will be complemented by a nearby, offshore containment barrier that will further protect the marine and shore habitat. These objects meld aesthetic value with functionality, reflecting the “poetic utility” for which Simpson is known.
Two of the proposed Alaskan Way Viaduct columns to be saved. Image courtesy of the artist.
While much of the waterfront will soon be unrecognizable, preserved only in memory and photographs, Simpson is aiming to save part of the historic seawall railing and four columns of the Alaskan Way Viaduct as part of his project. By salvaging a portion of the seawall, Simpson will create a rubble edge or “Athropocene Threshold.” The project will also include what Simpson has coined “Searisers”—a seating wall of stackable benches that will either be made of stone or concrete poured from historic rubble. The stone would be either sandstone or granite to reference historic buildings in Pioneer Square, or limestone, a staple in Simpson’s practice for its pH-neutralizing properties.
The salvaged Alaskan Way Viaduct columns will act as totems and historical markers of the ever-changing landscape of the city. The ground around one of the columns will be excavated to reveal the sedimentary layers of urban progress, dating back over a century. Though the removal of the viaduct has been delayed for some time now, the seawall project is on schedule, and should be wrapped up by 2016. The seawall’s central portion is to be completed this summer, while Simpson is putting the finishing touches on his design plan. The exact date of Anthropocene Beach‘s unveiling remains to be determined.
As construction at the waterfront marches forward, Simpson’s mythic, humanized alter ego “Woodman” comes to mind. Back in the 1970s amidst the urban redevelopment sweeping the downtown area, Simpson would appear episodically as the “Woodman” at construction sites, carefully gathering as much debris as he could carry on his back, physically and metaphorically carrying the weight of history and the burden of urban renewal. The debris would be too much for one man to carry, and pieces would fall that he would then pick back up, only to fall down once again in a tragicomic dance against the forces of demolition that accompany urban progress. The message was a call for engagement by the community to help carry what no individual can manage alone. The redesign of the waterfront will come at more than great financial cost, as there are always social and ecological costs as well. “Woodman” reminds citizens to bear the weight of the changes together, to be proper stewards of what is gained and what is lost in the name of progress.
Simpson is indefatigable in his own stewardship, persistent in his vision and unfailing in his dedication to creating works that intersect social and ecological concerns to act as forces for positive change. The difference between Simpson’s own humble vision of urban development and the utopian vision of the waterfront’s redesign is not lost on Simpson. “Green”—in so many senses of the word—has dominated the environmental conversation, especially the color itself, evocative of nature as a pristine, virid wilderness outside the city, apart from it. Simpson’s practice collapses the illusory boundary between nature and culture, embracing the a more holistic view of the natural and urban environments. The waterfront acts as a crucial nexus where the marine life of Elliot Bay rubs against and mingles with the cultural industries of downtown Seattle. Anthropocene Beach looks beyond the pristine greens idealized by popular environmental consciousness and draws upon a spectrum of colors, from the muddy browns of a rotting tree trunk to the dull greys of a concrete column, the muted colors of the earth and the past that are the foundation for our present and—lest we forget—our future.
