Public art expands into Olympia’s neighborhoods with Art Crossing project

From “The Kiss” at Percival Landing to the school of decorated salmon inside the Olympia Center, downtown Olympia is peppered with public art.

Now, it’s the neighborhoods’ turn.

Illuminated steel-and-glass sculptures of a heron and a salmon, installed along West Bay Drive earlier this spring, form the first in a series of eight planned Art Crossings that will mark transitions between neighborhoods and landscapes and gateways into the city of Olympia.

There’s more to the pair — and to the others that will eventually encircle the city — than artistic merit. Each set of roadside sculptures will reflect something about the history and the people of its location. The city has been working with neighborhood associations to find out what residents value.

West Bay’s “Guardians” by Lin McJunkin and Milo White reflect the Northwest neighborhood’s connection to nature and call attention to the presence of West Bay Woods, a refuge for herons and other wildlife.

“We’re celebrating our neighborhood,” said Bruce Coulter of the Northwest Neighborhood Association. “The project is going to enhance our neighborhood.”

The 14-foot-heron and 7-foot-salmon, lit by solar-powered fixtures, greet drivers, walkers and cyclists from either side of the road near the base of the Woodard Pathway, which links Woodard Avenue to West Bay Drive. On the waterfront side is the location of the proposed West Bay Yards mixed-use development.

Though the installation is called an Art Crossing, the sculptures aren’t meant to suggest that pedestrians cross the street at that spot, said Stephanie Johnson, Olympia’s arts program manager.

“The reason for the term crossing is that it is reflective of fabric, warp and weft,” she told The Olympian. “They are crossings between neighborhoods. They tie neighborhoods together.”

The sculptures are collaborations among the city, the neighborhoods and the artists, who are expected to have a relationship with Olympia.

Though they are based in Mount Vernon, McJunkin and White and their work are familiar to locals; they’ve been participating for years in the Percival Plinth Project, the city’s summer sculpture competitions.

Squaxin Island artist Andrea Wilbur-Sigo of Shelton is at work on the second Art Crossing, set to be installed in August on Eastside Street on either side of the bridge over Interstate 5. She’ll carve two 10-foot cedar poles, one representing the Tree People and the other the People of the Water.

She’s titling the duo “Unity,” a name that reflects not only the theme of the pieces but also their location.

“That project is literally tying together two neighborhoods that long ago had been bisected by I-5,” Johnson said. “That’s a really interesting part of the story of those neighborhoods.”

The locations for the other crossings included in the project plan will form an irregular loop around Olympia’s urban core, with three at the city limits.

The timeline for the project depends on the availability of funding, though the city already has money set aside for the third Crossing, which will be at Martin Way and Pacific Avenue.

Johnson has applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that would allow the city to move forward simultaneously with that project and another at Harrison Avenue and Division Street on the west side.

“People will start to see a pattern as they move through the community,” she said. “All of these neighborhoods are so different. They have different interests and needs and values, but they also are all Olympia. All of these parts and pieces make up a whole.”