An era long gone but not forgotten

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published October 04, 2008

Comments (0)

He's burly, wears flannel, has an ax in one hand and a full-grown tree in the other, and he stands taller than Mount Rainier.

An artist's legacy

Jean Cory Beall, who died in 1978, created several notable mosaic murals in Washington state.

In addition to the piece in the General Administration Building, she produced the mosaic of the Capitol Dome found in downtown Olympia, above the entrance to the First National Bank Building, now Bank of America.

Other Beall murals include one for the Federal Reserve Building in Seattle and another for Seattle City Light, now on display in the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.

The mural in the General Administration Building on the Capitol Campus includes 180,000 tiles of glass and stone, hand-cut in Venice, Italy. Beall supervised the installation of the mural in 1959.

While most similar murals have clear sections, this one does not, noted Janae Huber, collections manager for the Washington State Arts Commission.

"The only thing I can see are the repairs. I can't see the seams. That's the skill of the person putting it together," Huber said.

The repairs date back to the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, said Marygrace Jennings, cultural resources manager for the Department of General Administration.

Because the mural is curved, it is both more sensitive to earthquakes and will be more difficult to move and relocate before its home is demolished in 2010.

"It needs to be studied. A really thorough examination of the risks in moving it needs to be completed," Jennings said. "Because it's not made in panels, the whole thing has to be moved in one piece. And because it's curved, it doesn't have the stability of a flat piece. And as you can imagine, it's quite heavy."

The logger dominating Jean Cory Beall's 315-square-foot mosaic on the Capitol Campus captures the artwork's contradiction: It's most notable as a period piece, but not everyone wants to celebrate the era it represents.

"The imagery is really powerful, and it's timely. If someone were to be telling a story about what our lives are like today in Washington state, this would not be it," said Janae Huber, collections manager for the Washington State Arts Commission.

The historic artwork champions atomic power, aviation, logging, shipyards, hydroelectric dams, wildlife, rivers and agriculture in 180,000 hand-cut pieces of glass and stone. Its future is in doubt as the General Administration Building — an office building that also captures the heyday of can-do Americanism — is scheduled to be demolished in a little more than a year.

"It's not something that can be wedged into the corner," Huber said, studying in the mosaic in the lobby of the General Administration Building. "You can tell (Beall) designed it for the space. It speaks to the room."

But the sheer force with which Beall preserved this image of postwar Washington makes her work slightly controversial.

Dave Grenier walks by the piece every day as a communications consultant at Washington State Patrol headquarters.

"You've got the white male in center. He's larger than the mountain. Almost every element in here is under the control of man. The rivers are dammed," Grenier said, pointing to the logs floating down stream, the ducks on a collision course with a squadron of jets.

"It's man's domination and use of the natural world," he said, noting a mural created today would focus on the state's environmental riches, like the salmon leaping on the Washington quarter.

"The bias for us would be completely different," he said.

The 11-foot-by-32-foot mosaic came up in a recent meeting of the Capitol Campus Design Advisory Committee, which was considering progress on the Heritage Center and Executive Office Building.

Next page >>