New Public Art

cascadia
a public artwork
for Civic Center Playfield park
by Clark Wiegman
2023

Civic Park Public Art proposal

Described as ‘a love letter to the Salish Sea’, cascadia draws attention to our collective relationship to the local environment. Entering the park under the expansive shade structure, visitors are greeted by a suspended lifeboat sculpture and a super-graphic seawall mural. As a duet in form, pattern and color, lifeboat and seawall bring viewers into a dialog between the  esthetic of light and shadow, biota and habitat, civilization and wilderness, which speaks to a deep sense of place.

Striking a balance between iconic universality and locational uniqueness, the artwork alludes to Edmonds’ vibrant downtown Creative District and extensive green infrastructure within a larger context. Close examination of lifeboat reveals various flora, fauna and microbes woven into the hull’s patterns, while seawall surveys the terrain it inhabits. Highlighting riparian settlement overlays as they relate to a web of life, the installation encourages viewers to contemplate a sense of belonging to a larger bio-region and caring for our shared environs.

Clark Wiegman is a Pacific Northwest artist whose work explores ways we may experience nature through cultural frames. Each project responds to situational variables with anomalous beauty that maps the challenges of transformation. Over the past three decades, he’s created projects for a variety of civic contexts throughout North America. 

 To see the development and progress of the fabrication of the artwork, go to: lifeboatseawall.blogspot.com


public art development process

The City’s public art process for an integrated public art installation contracts an artist through a competitive process.  The selection, facilitated through the Edmonds Arts Commission, is based on an artist's qualifications and past work designing and fabricating public art installation in a designated location. 

The public art site was identified by the Civic Park landscape architects in the master plan for redevelopment. In February 2020, the Civic Park Public Art Project, with a total budget of $90,000, was approved by City Council. Clark Wiegman was one of five finalists selected after interviews by a panel of community representatives, an arts commissioner, and City Council member. The project's design contract with Wiegman was approved by City Council in October 2021 after a public hearing, and the concept for cascadia was approved for fabrication at a City Council meeting following a public hearing in March 2022. Wiegman worked with the challenges of the pandemic to meet with various community groups and individuals as he developed a concept and design.

For information about the redevelopment of Civic Park, go to Civic Center Playfield park redevelopment.