Duck Prints 1 - Seattle, WA
N 47° 36.323 W 122° 20.227
10T E 549824 N 5272655
This curious set of duck prints are located on the NW corner of 1st Ave. and Spring St in downtown Seattle, WA.
Waymark Code: WMG65K
Location: Washington, United States
Date Posted: 01/18/2013
Views: 7
One of the most bizarre things I came across in my trip to Seattle over the holidays were two sets of duck prints embedded in the sidewalks along Spring Street. This particular petrosomatoglyph contains the last two prints in bronze as a final touch. They are obviously man-made and in doing some research online I discovered a wonderful PDF
document by the Seattle Department of Transportation titled,
Book III: Sidewalk Survey, that highlights many art projects that were produced by local artists in collaboration with the
Art in Public Places Program in order to spruce up the look and feel of parts of Seattle that might have needed a 'facelift', so-to-speak. The SDOT sidewalk survey done in 2005 references a much older document titled
Artwork Network - A planning Study for Seattle:Art in the Civic Context from 1984. I found an excerpt from that document that discusses these particular duck prints I found and says:
STREETSCAPE
Sidewalks, with their constant use and familiar presence, could be explored by artist as linear sites or sets of sites ... Artist Don Scott continues to place bronze "Benchmarks" in a number of sidewalks throughout the downtown area as an artistic transformation of the familiar surveyor's benchmark.
I found out that the artist who most likely created these prints, Don Scott, passed away in 1985, just a year after the planning study was done, so it was impossible to find out any more information on him online. Nevertheless, This PDF document encompasses some wonderful art projects throughout Seattle, many of which I've waymarked in other parts of the city! I now have a document that I can refer to in the event I ever return to Seattle and can use this as a reference for locating other artistic pieces that haven't been waymarked.