A deep memory: walking along the Seattle waterfront with my family during a special trip to Ivar's for fish and chips, discovering the pennies smashed inside the bronze ship's wheels on the concrete rail at the water's edge. Years later, in the early 90s, Norie Sato's pieces for the In Public installation program through the Seattle Art Commission inspired a similar kind of wonder, pulling invisible historic narratives from back to an interactive present. Now, back again to see the changing profile of the waterfront in contrast with these personal icons. Thinking of ways that stories are experienced, made significant, or shared through placemaking, and the role of public art as a platform, springboard, container or mirror.
"For those who have developed a sense of place, then, it is as though there is an unseen layer of usage, memory, and significance -- an invisible landscape, if you will, of imaginative landmarks -- superimposed upon the geographical surface and the two-dimensional map." Kent C. Ryden from his book, Mapping the Invisible Landscape