"Migration Stage: Anthropocene Dolos and SeaBearer" by Buster Simpson Publicly-sited artwork projects anchor the new Waterfront Park along Seattle’s central waterfront. As 2025 draws to a close, a visitor to Seattle’s transformed waterfront can view 9 site-specific artwork projects and two fountain re-installations that illustrate the City’s commitment to including art throughout the new park, and the connections leading to it from downtown neighborhoods. The Office of Arts & Culture and the then-Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects (OWCP – which now includes Sound Transit) commissioned publicly-sited artworks as part of the various infrastructure investments known collectively as the Waterfront Seattle program.
The Waterfront Seattle program included art and culture as an essential element in the design and programming of this civic investment. Early on, the City commissioned art plans for both the Elliott Bay Seawall project and for the central waterfront program to identify commission opportunities. The art plans also identified several themes including the environment, and the community, of the waterfront. The latter has translated into projects that celebrate the regional Coast Salish cultures. Included in the plans was the intention to activate the waterfront with cultural events and temporary artworks; Friends of Waterfront Seattle, the city’s philanthropic partner, manages these activities.
Projects that inform the viewer about the environment and ecology of the waterfront
Seawall Strata
Using construction dollars, i.e. this artwork is not part of Seattle Civic Art Collection, the City installed Seawall Strata by Haddad/Drugan (Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan), during the rebuilding of the Elliott Bay seawall. The seawall features textured pre-cast concrete panels that provide habitat for the marine plants and animals on which migrating salmon feed. Haddad Drugan’s abstracted marine life forms are visible during low tide from Pier 62. Haddad Drugan authored the “Elliott Bay Seawall Project Art Programming Plan” that informed the commissioning of the projects funded by Alaskan Way Seawall Bond 1% for Art dollars.
Land Buoy Bells
Land Buoy Bells by Stephen Vitiello makes audible the tidal and wave energy of Elliott Bay. Located on the floating dock at Pier 62, the sound sculpture uses industrial materials, steel tank ends, transformed into a set of five instruments. Engineered mechanisms that move with the dock release stored energy, causing the bell-like objects to be struck randomly. The sounds create an auditory environment that is unique to the waterfront. Vitiello lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Alaskan Way Seawall Bond 1% for Art funds
More: First publicly-sited waterfront artwork installed yesterday at Pier 62 – Art Beat
Unfurling a Gesture (The Nature of Persistence)
Seattle artist Norie Sato collaborated with the project design team to create Unfurling a Gesture (The Nature of Persistence) on the new Union Street Pedestrian Bridge between Western Avenue and Alaskan Way that provides access to the waterfront from downtown. The natural environment that makes its presence felt on the working waterfront inspired the artwork. A screen wall along the length of the pedestrian bridge depicts fern fronds through perforations in the aluminum overlaid with a laser-cut stainless steel seagull’s wingspan. At the west end, a 40-ft-tall stainless steel sculpture arches over the new stairway.
Central Waterfront 1% for Art and construction funds. These 1% for Art funds are derived from city sources, Friends of Waterfront Park philanthropy and Waterfront Local Improvement District funds.
More: Norie Sato’s new publicly-sited artwork installed on the waterfront – Art Beat
Migration Stage: Anthropocene Dolos and SeaBearer
Seattle-based public artist Buster Simpson addresses the impact of climate change and sea level rise in Migration Stage, two groupings of utilitarian cast concrete sculptures set on the promenade near the Habitat Beach in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Anthropocene Dolos, fourteen sculptures based on shoreline armor used to prevent erosion, are arranged to encourage people to sit and socialize. The SeaBearer benches take the form of sandbags which are used against water infiltration during floods. They also resemble grain bags, a reference to a commodity exchanged at the nearby port. The project is a response to the environmental forces that affect shorelines and marine habitats.
Alaskan Way Seawall Bond 1% for Art funds
Sound to Summit
With improvements in east-west pedestrian connections through Downtown and across Alaskan Way, accessing the new Waterfront Park has become easier and more engaging with thoughtfully designed infrastructure and art. Artists Derek Bruno and Gage Hamilton worked with the Pike Pine Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements Project project’s design team to unify the corridor by integrating art into key infrastructure components.
Sound to Summit uses a morphing wave form across bike buffers, pre-cast planters, and overpass railings to provide visual cohesiveness to Pike and Pine Streets. The pattern starts as a curvilinear sine wave at the western ends and transforms into a triangular peak form at the east end, representing movement from Elliott Bay to Capitol Hill, from water to mountains. The railings reinforce the theme with a color palette which ranges from blue shades (sound) to green (summit). Designed by the artists and implemented by the general contractor as part of project construction, the artwork enlivens streetscape structures.
Central Waterfront 1% for Art and construction funds.
Guests
42 large scale foam and fabric “puppets” inhabit a space under the Overlook Walk, bobbing and floating in air currents. Suspended behind a perforated screen, Ann Hamilton’s project is visible during the day through viewing ports along the sidewalk. At night, seen through the grid of metal panels, the illuminated figures have the appearance of stained-glass, while their lumbering movements refer to the buoys and dynamics of water nearby. The billowing nature of the cloth evokes sails, semaphore flags, waves – elements of the marine environment while the cave-like space could be an underwater grotto.
Alaskan Way Seawall Bond 1% for Art funds
More: Puppets in Motion: Ann Hamilton’s “Guests” Under Overlook Walk – Art Beat
Project that celebrates the Native community and culture of the Waterfront
To Our Teachers dəqʷaləd (Houseposts)
Prior to the arrival of settlers from other parts of the country, the original inhabitants of the region built structures along the shore. Drawing on the architectural forms used locally by Indigenous cultures, artist Oscar Tuazon designed a three-block long installation made of 22 pairs of sculpted Douglas fir post and beam structures that define space, and six individual posts that stand like sentinels in Waterfront Park. The artwork serves as a framework for a collaboration with three regional carvers to honor a uniquely Salish form that combines architecture and sculpture – the living tradition of carved house posts.
Looking At All Tomorrows ʔəslaʔlabəd kʷədi bəḱʷ dadatu
Randi Purser (Suquamish) carved the figure of Chief Sealth (Seattle’s namesake) as an infant in the arms of his mother, Sholeetsa, mounted on the northernmost post. This intricately carved cedar panel has a counterpart on Bainbridge Island – a welcome pole depicting Chief Sealth’s father Schweabe, commissioned by the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation for the South to Olympics.
Honoring Our Muckleshoot Warriors
The cedar carving by Tyson Simmons and Keith Stevenson (Muckleshoot) on the southernmost post represents and honors a warrior, representing “strength and honor for the people.”
Central Waterfront 1% for Art and construction funds.
More: Oscar Tuazon’s New Publicly-Sited Artwork Installed on Seattle’s Waterfront – Art Beat
Family
Three commanding figures look out from Waterfront Parks’s promenade, past Pier 58 and across the Elliott Bay towards the gravesite of Chief Sealth, after whom Seattle is named. These carved cedar sculptures are the work of Qwalsius-Shaun Peterson (Puyallup) and represent a mother, father, and child together titled Family. The sculptures stand between 10 and 12 feet tall, not including their uniquely-shaped concrete bases. They have textured, incised and painted details and amalgamate older carving traditions and contemporary vision. Powder-coated aluminum panels, cut with patterns drawn from Coast Salish imagery will be added in 2026. The artworks remind us that the Seattle waterfront is located on Coast Salish homelands.
Central Waterfront 1% for Art and construction funds.
More: “Family” on the Waterfront: Honoring Coast Salish Heritage Through Art – Art Beat
To be installed in 2026
syiq̓ibs ʔə kayəʔ (Grandmother’s Basket)
The MTK Matriarchs – Malynn Foster (Squaxin Island/Skokomish,) Tamela LaClair (Skokomish), Kimberly Deriana (Mandan/Hidatsa) – will install a large scale abstracted Coast Salish Basket on the Salish Steps level of the Overlook Walk. The artwork “honors the interconnected web of life through a Coast Salish open cross-warped twined weaving sculpture—a traditional clam basket.” The basket is a mixed media sculpture that includes imagery of hands and fingers, the tools important to a weaver. The basket is also a metaphor for the matrilinear roles of grandmother, mothers and caretakers who teach across generations.
Central Waterfront 1% for Art funds.
Reinstalled Works
The Waterfront program reinstalled two bronze fountains, restored by the Office of Arts & Culture. George Tsutakawa’s Joshua Green, Sr., Fountain can be found in a new basin at the end of Columbia Street on the promenade, and Waterfront Fountain by James H. FitzGerald and Margaret Tomkins anchors the southeast corner of Pier 58.
This is a blog post from the Seattle Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects.
Arts and culture play a central role on the waterfront. Responding to the history of the site, its ecology, economy and communities, publicly-sited art commissions help to create a sense of place that invite residents and visitors alike to visit the waterfront. Learn more about art in the Waterfront’s vision.
There are 9 publicly-sited artworks planned for the waterfront. Read our other posts about the completed pieces.
