Public art installation

Story

This is an actual public sculpture I designed and executed for Sound Transit’s LINK light rail system. It sits on the train platform at the Rainier Beach Station (South Henderson St. and MLK way in Seattle).

I approached this work as a kind of user interface. I observed that tired people spend a lot of time leaning against vertical objects while waiting for trains to arrive. I wanted to engage with this behaviour and attach some information to it for both the waiting passenger and observers in passing trains.

This is an interactive piece in which viewers can actively measure their own height against the columns, which are incremented on one side with various historical measurement units, and on the other side with the heights of various prehistoric and modern animals.

This project required not only my illustration skills, but actually sculpting the pieces from wax. I coordinated engineers, architects, foundry technicians, welders, masons, in a massive effort that took several years to complete.