Restless Bird - Seattle, WA
N 47° 36.233 W 122° 20.068
10T E 550024 N 5272490
This concrete sculpture lies inside a small courtyard between the Bank of California Building (Key Bank) and the Norton Building on 2nd Avenue in downtown Seattle, WA.
Waymark Code: WMG4ER
Location: Washington, United States
Date Posted: 01/11/2013
Views: 2
This concrete bird sculpture is very subtly situated in a small courtyard of the Norton Building and most passersby would not notice it at all unless they were coming or going from the parking garage of the Norton Building. This sculpture, thankfully, caught my eye and invited me to come take a closer look.
Restless Bird is a very sleek and stylish-looking sculpture and something you might see perched on top of a building or tall, monument base, not grounded at eye level in the back corner of a city courtyard. There is no inscription or plaque or even acknowledgment from the artist,
Philip McCracken on this statue and I only came across the details to this piece after browsing through the Smithsonian Art Inventory
website.
There is also another website with a short video of Philip McCracken here. The following excerpt is from the HistoryLink.org website in reference to Philip's take on the spirit bird sculptures he's often connected to:
"Things come out of the environment and get stored in my mind," he said. "Images and ideas make connections back of the curtain of consciousness, and re-emerge transformed. I don't examine them too soon. I don't want to violate that -- whatever it is" ... Birds have been his most enduring subject and symbol, particularly early in his career. They became sculptural models for his own inner states, especially for that part of his spirit that dwelled in the woods, at some times feeling caged and at others time snug, as expressed in Owl Home and Owl Family, both done in 1958.