The Office of Arts & Culture is excited to announce two recent artist selections: Martha Jackson Jarvis will be the artist for the 23^rd Avenue Improvements project, and Norie Sato will be the artist for the East/West Connections project on Union Street as part of Waterfront Seattle.

East/West Connection on Union Street | Norie Sato

In conjunction with Waterfront Seattle and SDOT, the East/West Connections project on Union Street is making an effort to connect streets and facilitate pedestrian passage to new public spaces on Seattle’s Central Waterfront.  Artist Norie Sato has been chosen to collaborate with the project design team to create an original artwork or series of artworks on the rebuilt east-west Union and/or Seneca streets between First Avenue and Alaskan Way.

Sato’s public artworks have appeared in and on transit and transportation facilities, airports, libraries, universities, infrastructure, parks, and other civic structures, including the San Francisco National Airport, Miami International Airport, the Arabian Library in Scottsdale, AZ, and transit systems for Portland, Salt Lake City, and Tempe. She works in sculpture, glass, terrazzo floors, integrated design work, landscape, video and light; through these mediums she strives to add meaning and human touch to the built environment and to consider edges, transitions, culture and connections to the environment. She has been recognized numerous times by the Public Art Network’s Year in Review, the only national award that recognizes public art projects.

Sato has been active in the Seattle art scene since the 70s, when she was involved with and/or, an artist-run space, as a commissioner on the Seattle Arts Commission in the nascent days of Seattle’s public art program, and as lead artist for Sound Transit’s Seattle Central Link Light Rail. In addition, her own work in video, glass and on paper has been exhibited at galleries and museums around the country.

23^rd Avenue Improvements project | Martha Jackson Jarvis

The 23^rd Avenue Corridor Improvements project is being undertaken by the Seattle Department of Transportation in order to better serve pedestrians, bike riders and vehicles in the Central District. Selected artist Martha Jackson Jarvis will work with project design consultants, SDOT, community representatives and the Office of Arts & Culture to develop permanent public art that treats the 23^rd Avenue corridor as  a unified experience, with areas of focus around Union, Cherry and Jackson Streets. The artwork will include historically relevant narratives of the neighborhood and stories of the people who have lived or created significant impact in the neighborhood, as well as address the changing and widening demographics of this area of the city. The project spans 23^rd Avenue from Hill Street to Roanoke Street, and will include new pavement, sidewalk and lighting improvements along with public art.

Jackson Jarvis is located in Washington DC; she studied at Howard University, received a BFA degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a MFA from Antioch University. She has undertaken public and corporate art commissions for numerous public institutions including a courthouse, botanical garden, transit stations, and museums both national and international, including Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Studio Museum of Harlem, N.Y., and Tretyakov Gallery Moscow in the U.S.S.R.

Photos courtesy Sato & Jackson-Jarvis