SEATTLE — Jim Rupp could change your life...or at least your walk in the park. His new book, Art in Seattle's Public Spaces, transports a mundane stroll around town into an art adventure. "The city is a lot more interesting if you know what's around you. And that's really why I did it," Rupp says.
He's had the idea since high school, to provide a sort of guidebook. "There are over 350 pieces of art in the city and it doesn't cost you a thing to look at them. They're all there, free of charge."
His book goes beyond the plaque next to many works. He interviewed more than 90 artists to uncover the deeper stories behind the art. "There was artwork to look at and nothing to tell you what it was and how it got there."
Accompanied by photographs from Miguel Edwards, the book takes the reader from Sodo to South Lake Union. "This whole city is an art museum."
The book invites us to see works like a tower of what appears to be laundry baskets from the early 1900s. "The artist actually learned how to weave baskets from women up in Everett. And this commemorates the 1917 laundry strike."
There's also a metal sculpture that appears to be some sort of booth in the shadow of one of the new Amazon buildings. "This is the ghostly image of a parking booth that used to be in South Lake Union. The artists who created it did all sorts of research to see what used to be here before all the development. And they saw they were parking lots everywhere. And every parking lot had a little blue square you could pay your ticket. So that's what Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo created here just to refer to the way things used to be."
He says art can open up Seattle in a new way. "I've been in places in the city I didn't even know existed and it's because there's an artwork there...A lot of times people will look at a work and not like it. And then they learn something about it and they say, 'Oh I understand now.'"
Ruup will speak about and sign his book at University Bookstore April 19th.
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