City of Edmonds - Washington

Project Development

The City’s public art process for integrated design selects and hires an artist based on their qualifications and past work to design to create and fabricate public art in a designated location. In February 2020, the Civic Park Public Art Project, with a total budget of $90,000, was approved by City Council. Seattle artist Clark Wiegman was selected after interviews by panel of community representatives and arts commissioners with 5 finalists, and after a public hearing. Wiegman has extensive experience with public art and has worked in many communities on artwork which connects the unique site to the broader vision of community. The design contract ($18,000) with Wiegman was approved by City Council in October 2021. 

Wiegman worked with the challenges of the pandemic to meet with various community groups and individuals as he developed a concept. The art installation site, identified by the landscape architects in the master plan, is a large shelter adjacent to the restrooms.

The cascadia concept Wiegman created is a three-dimensional "lifeboat" suspension under the shelter that is in dialogue with a two-dimensional "seawall" on the wall of the restrooms. The design concept was approved at City Council following a public hearing in March 2022.

Described as ‘a love letter to the Salish Sea’, the artwork is designed as a multimedia, multi-sensory installation, celebrating our collective relationship to the local environment. Entering the park under the expansive shade structure (which will be located on the west side of the park), visitors will be greeted by a suspended sculpture and a super-graphic artwork. As a duet in illuminated form and colorful organic patterning, cascadia is a lustrous facet in the crowning jewel of Edmonds’ emerald necklace of parks, streams and shoreline.

cascadia expresses a relationship to the regional environment intended to bring viewers into a dialog between light and shadow, sound and silence, biota and habitat. It strikes a balance between iconic universality and locational uniqueness, particularly as it relates to Edmonds extensive green infrastructure and vibrant downtown cultural district. The project encourages viewers to contemplate their place within the web of our shared natural world. Through the spatial relationship between an iconic lifeboat and a luminous seawall, the artwork will create a feeling of belonging to a larger bioregion, fostering a sense of caring for each other and our environs.

lifeboat is an archetype, a cross-cultural universal symbol of human-powered water trans- port, a beacon boat, a vivid vessel, a cargo kayak, a star ship, a proverbial ark, a cedar dream…Brackett's canoe, a Salish skiff, a Nordic clinker, a Chippewa raft, a Polynesian pontoon, a Swahili mtumbwi, an Uro totora, a Neolithic dugout…an intricately-patterned sculptural form…a brilliant torso, a floating totem...a stylus,quill,pen,brush,scribe…flickering, flying, floating, rowing, writing, drawing.

seawall....a beautiful seawall that’s an iconic luminescent way-finder, a topographical map, a land- scape painting, a giant terrestrial print, an expressionist canvas, a fantastic fresco, a cognitive landscape or mythical map of Cascadia…a habitat mural, a meditation on a watery corner of the continent…an aerial view of watersheds, mountains and forests that signifies a gathering place for families, friends and neighbors.