Secured Embrace

We found ourselves at the Frye Art Museum today so thought I’d blip this piece of cast concrete, tree root wads, and stainless steel cable. The light was good on it....
Buster Simpson is a Seattle based artist who is known in the US and Europe for public installations about the environment and what is happening to it. He was a pioneer here in Seattle in the 70’s for public art. He’s a dumpster diver who makes us aware of what is being lost in the city, using old pieces of demolished buildings among other many varied environmental subjects, usually with a sense of humor.

This is the description of this piece which is at the entrance to the museum in the reflecting pool.
"The place where anything grows up...It's habitat gives to it not only a space...but an overall atmosphere as well, which penetrates it and whoever experiences it. Habitats have allays had this effect, but it is especially important now, when our advanced art approaches a fragile but marvelous life, one that maintains itself by a mere thread, melting the surroundings, the artist, the work and every who comes to it into an elusive, changeable configuration"
Allan Kaprow, Essays on the blurring of art and life

“This work is the protective, though hospitable sentinel for the exhibition, guarding the shore of the museum while also signaling a suitable habitat. Here, the typically four legged breakwater armor unit- a tetrapod - is anthropomorphized by Simpson and courageously sits clutching tree root wads. The artist proposes legions of these to be deployed on shorelines to prevent erosion and stimulate healthy aquatic life.”

More about this retrospective HERE.