The artwork RECLAIMED by artist Jean Shin is close to being installed permanently at the North Transfer Station, located at 1350 North 34th Street in Seattle, WA. Shin worked with the design team to develop a permanent artwork that will be integrated at Seattle Public Utilities’ new facility.
RECLAIMED references the topography of the site before 1966 when the North Transfer Station was built, and brings the memory of the former landscape to the new Transfer Station plaza. The artwork transforms nearly 10,000 linear feet of recycled rebar salvaged from the site during demolition. The sculpture will be finished with a bright orange painted surface and will create three lyrical, lacelike sculptures that weave together a topographical memory of the site and cut landmasses.
Enlivening the new plaza, the sculptures’ placement and the pathways that are created between them provide active spaces for public engagement. These inviting paths, delineated by bright orange painted lines on the pavement, connect 34th Street to the entrance of the building. Another path between the two tallest sculptures leads to the landscape area, framing an intimate view of the garden.
Together, these sculptures made out of new and repurposed rebar from the site, partnered with the installation of colored lines on the pavement, suggest a close relationship of art, industry, and nature coexisting in the same location. As visitors walk through the plaza, the public is invited to consider the significance of place, its impact on materials and their connection to the environment both past and present. RECLAIMED highlights the potential of waste material to be reimagined into an elegant second life within the community, and echoes the sustainable principle of re-use at the Transfer Station.”
The North Transfer Station is located near the dividing line between the neighborhoods of Fremont and Wallingford in a residential area close to businesses, as well as the Burke Gilman Trail. For more information about the project, visit the project website at www.seattle.gov/util/NewNorth.
About Jean Shin
New York City artist Jean Shin creates elaborate sculptures and site-specific installation using accumulated cast-off materials. Her installations have been widely exhibited in museums and cultural institutions abroad and in the U.S., including the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona; Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has been commissioned for permanent works by the U.S. General Services Administration Art in Architecture Award, New York City Percent for Art and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Art for Transit programs. She has received numerous awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures and Sculpture, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art Award. She is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York.
This artwork is commissioned with Seattle Public Utilities’ 1% for Art funds.
Images courtesy Fabrication Specialties Limited
