For the past few days, I have been listening to documentaries on the historic renovation of the cathedral. In so doing, I am struck by similarities that exist between the plight of Notre-Dame de Paris and our own Pike Place Market. To learn more, I will explain. when you read the blog. In this tale, it is the two Victors: Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris and Victor Steinbrueck and the Pike Place Market who made a positive difference with similarities of purpose.
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Pike Place Market - The Soul of the City of Seattle
We can experience a very old part of Seattle by visiting the Pike Place Market first opened in 1907. Most of its collection of interconnected buildings were constructed by 1929. They haven't changed a bit. They still serve the same function: to host farmers to sell their wares.
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Seattle's Parks and Boulevards - An Olmsted Brothers Legacy
At the turn of the 20th century, Seattle, founded in 1885, was a city that was going on 15 years old. Young Seattle was growing at a fast clip, showing no signs of slowing down. Early Seattle leaders had the foresight to conserve land for the purpose of current as well as future generations to enjoy. Fortunately, these leaders decided to create a parks system in Seattle. They hired notable landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and John Charles Olmsted to develop the master plans for Seattle’s nascent parks system.
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The Inspiring, Incredible, Off-the-Charts Fabulous!
1962 Seattle World's Fair
Watercolor: Space Needle, Coliseum, Science Pavilion. 2021.
1962 Seattle World's Fair
2022 will mark the 60th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. This spectacular event attracted over 10 million visitors during the six months it was open from April 21-October 21, 1962. The World’s Fair provided Seattle with an iconic landmark, the Space Needle. It gave the world a vision of the future. In its wake, it left the City of Seattle with major infrastructure serving as a cultural nexus to this day. I find the fair incredibly inspirational for the times in which we now live.
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Watercolor. World Trade Center. 2001. ML.
The Architect of the World Trade Center - Minoru Yamasaki
I was absolutely bowled over to learn that the person who designed the World Trade Center was the same architect of three well-known buildings in my hometown of Seattle.
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Yoshino Cherry Trees, Quadrangle, University of Washington. April 2021.
Cherry Trees along the Quadrangle
The season of the cherry blossoms is brief. Only about four weeks. But they are magical days. Whatever is the secret or magical power of these trees to lull so many people to frolic in their presence, I don't know. But there is something magnetic about the trees, and probably the Quad too.
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Work in Progress. Oil sketch, Volunteer Park. View from south lily pad pond looking north. “Black Sun” is on the right. Oil on Canvas, 8x10.” 2021. I have the painting sitting in an antique frame for now.
A Sense of Place
I made a few sketches of an area of the park in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum where there are two ponds of lily pads. Towering above in the center, the monumental "Black Sun" black granite sculpture created in 1969 by Japanese/American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
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Lily pad pond, Volunteer Park, Seattle. Oil on Canvas, 24x24.” 2017. This is one of two lily pad ponds, original structures of the park design, that grace the park.
Sublime. Landscape Impressions of Capitol Hill.
Capitol Hill has been the backdrop of my life where I have lived since 1984. Often in parts of this old neighborhood of Seattle, I can easily slip into a daydream where I might be seeing the neighborhood through the eyes of its early citizens because of the history and timelessness of the landscape. Other times, I am taken back to solitary, exploratory walks of my youth. In this exercise of daydreaming, I am reminded of Marcel Proust's novel, "À la recherché du temps perdu" ("In Remembrance of Things Past") where the concept of time dissolves, and where the reconstruction of the past is relative to the present "now."
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