INHERITANCE: Sound Transit Public Art Permanent Sculpture, Kent/Des Moines

 

INHERITANCE is a large scale permanent public art sculpture commissioned by Sound Transit in King County, WA for a new light rail station serving the Kent/Des Moines area. This piece is about people and their connection to place and time.

 

At local events and organizations community members in the Kent and Des Moines area were asked how they felt a new Sound Transit station would impact them. How would it change their lives? Did they imagine better access to transportation, employment opportunities, changes to cost of living, property values, different neighbors, landscape, changes to local businesses and services? During the dialogues they were also asked to draw their family trees. These family trees are the source material for INHERITANCE and have been used to create a monumental stainless steel lattice work design that comprises the 30 ft. x 15 ft. x 26.5 ft sculpture. The piece is a monument to the diverse people who live in the neighborhood, representing their place in time, and the complex changes happening in their local space related to the new light rail station. The family trees represent generational inheritance and belonging, nodding to the nuclear family, and also toward the wider inheritance of cultural identity and meaning. Land as place has also been a part of this piece from the inception. This project acknowledges that ownership of land is a significant, generational form of inheritance and power, intersecting with class, race, and all aspects of a hierarchical legal society. Owners of land, both corporate, governmental, and private, determine how it will be used, who it will sustain, and who can access it. Because this artwork is labeled as “public”, it is important that it addresses issues of access to place.

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This project also acknowledges that it is standing on stolen land. 

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The form of the sculpture is an iconic A frame house, a reference to shelter as place and as sustainability. The public will walk directly under and through it to and from their cars at its corner plaza location where it sits at a slight angle off of the parking garage. The latticework is not opaque and will interact with the sky and other surrounding features, as well as cast intricate shadows as the sun moves across the sky. The public will have several viewing levels from the glass garage elevator, and from open landing areas on each parking level. 

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INHERITANCE is currently in the final phase of fabrication with Chelsea Gaddy at Force/Collide in Seattle, WA, and scheduled for final installation in December of 2024. It is significant to acknowledge that this prodigious project is the proud result of an incredible team comprised of a female artist of color, female owned and run metal fabrication house, and female project manager. A public art sector rarity.

 

​Learn more about Force/Collide here: https://www.forcecollide.com/