Above: Workers install public artwork on the
Washington State Employees Credit Union parking garage on 10th and Jefferson in
downtown Olympia this week. The work is by internationally known artist
Christian Moeller.
By
Janine Gates
Little
Hollywood
What are they? Bottle caps? Marshmallows?
And what
is that design? Hubcaps? Film reels? For some, it’s hard to tell. But back up and look at it from another angle, and you may see something different.
Whatever you see, the parking garage owned by the
Washington State Employees Credit Union (WSECU) in downtown Olympia has received
an artistic makeover.
Located across the street from the Olympia post
office on 10th and Jefferson, the six
story building has been “naked” for several years.
Tempered glass panels which originally surrounded
the brick building to better obscure the sight of vehicles in the garage were
removed after one spontaneously exploded on a hot day in August, 2013. For
safety reasons, all the panels were removed.
After an investigation, it was determined that there
were impurities in the glass making process.
Staff admitted in a 2013 Little Hollywood story that
the garage was pretty ugly without the panels, and the city expected the credit
union to get the building back to a state of being more visually appealing.
At long last, after a public process involving credit union
members, staff, and neighbors, international artist Christian Moeller was chosen
as the finalist to create the new exterior design.
Moeller is a professor and department chair of Design Media Arts at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
According to his biography, Moeller is an artist “working with contemporary media technologies to produce innovative and intense physical events, realized from handheld objects to architectural scale installations. Over the past two decades, his body of work represented one of the original and most complex investigations of what is possible to be revealed by the intersections of cinema, computation, music and physical space.”
Above: Looking northeast, the Washington State Employee Credit Union (WSECU) parking garage as seen from the roof of the WSECU building on Union Avenue in downtown Olympia. The artwork by Christian Moeller is titled, “Buttons.”
The artwork is 42 feet tall and covers the WSECU
parking structure over a surface of approximately 24,000 square feet. The
“canvas” of the artwork is made of galvanized chain-link fence and mounted with
the help of vertical tension cables in 12’ wide panels.
A total of 235,000 white “pixels” or disks made of
injection-molded vinyl are attached to the fence. Their contrast with the darker
background of holes not filled by a disk form large images.
The artwork came in large, numbered panels in rolls wrapped in plastic. Workers were seen this week mounting the rolls from the top of the
garage and securing them in place.
Moeller explored and mulled over a variety of thematic concepts
around the credit union’s values of community, family, and connections, explained Ann Flannigan, vice president of public relations for the Washington State Employees Credit Union.
Flannigan provided Little Hollywood a tour of the facility on Wednesday.
“His work, titled “Buttons,” is inspired by the idea of a grandmother’s old button box, a treasure chest of disks, all with different patterns and shapes.
“Buttons evoke connectivity, fastening, holding, and the joining of two pieces of fabric. For us, that fabric is community....I’m hopeful it will be an iconic part of the
Olympia landscape. Even though it’s our garage, it belongs to the community. We
wanted to make it interesting to look at and enjoy,” said Flannigan.
Above:
A close up of the artwork titled, “Buttons,” by Christian Moeller at the Washington State Employees Credit Union
parking garage in downtown Olympia.
Editor’s
Note, May 3: Asked to clarify the information gap between the 2013 Little Hollywood
story that described a different proposed art design, Ann Flannigan, vice
president of public relations for WSECU, responded:
“Our Board of Directors considered several
approaches for recladding the garage during the past few years. The “art panels” concept was going to be
married with replacement tempered glass panels. Ultimately, the Board asked for
additional options from our developer for their consideration, and we were
presented with Moeller’s approach, which they ultimately endorsed.
“Then new artwork didn’t go through a full design
review process because city staff were of the opinion that it was substantially
similar to the original design intent, which was our mandate. WSECU received approval for this latest
concept when presented to the city in 2016.”
Also, artist Christian Moeller is a professor and department chair of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, not Berkeley, as originally reported.
Little Hollywood appreciates the clarifications.
