Category: Cityscape
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Markers | Waterville, WA | 2013 Each spring, Ben trimmed snow-matted grass from around the tombstones. He personally knew just about everyone who’d died in the last 30 years, could point to their resting spots and recount the highlights of their lives. Ben insisted the lawn grew greener, thicker around grave markers of “good” people,…
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Fenced | Ellensburg, WA | 2013 Everyday we discover new fences, our own barriers to thinking, creating, moving towards something new and better. We likely build many of these fences ourselves. You know, those sturdy, even pretty fences that keep us safe and secure. We’re reluctant to tear them down or even pry off a…
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Wiring | Wenatchee, WA | 2013 A tech-heavy agency requiring miles of new wiring moved into an upstairs office space. For weeks we heard the whir-whir of cable being pulled through conduit — then silence. We tiptoed up the back stairs to find connector cords splayed like neural innards. My co-worker picked up a strand.…
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Rural Mailbox | Twisp, WA | 2012 What’s more utterly fantastic than a lone mailbox at the intersection of two gravel roads in the middle of nowhere? It’s a portal to exotic places and a receiver of valuable information. Millions of people use mailboxes to channel emotions — anger, happiness, affection — straight into the…
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Bus Shelter | Wenatchee, WA | 2012 Five p.m., quitting time, and this enclosed bus shelter is an oven. Tired women, clerks from discount stores and the dry cleaners, rest inside on the only bench. They gingerly place sore, bare feet atop work shoes smashed flat to keep skin off hot concrete. They wipe sweat…
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Roof Horizon | Tacoma, WA | 2012 Cities make their own horizons. The line between earth and sky can lie across the street, between office buildings or at a roof’s far edge. The visible horizon, anyway. The true horizon, like so many certainties, often stretches beyond our range of perception. We simply have faith it’s…
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Exit | Wenatchee, WA | 2012 I’ve come to appreciate the between-worlds aspect of vestibules. In the 1970s, my bank in the French Quarter had a transition space from outside’s muggy, messy, mildewed streetscape to a cool, quiet, ordered interior. This classy inter-room eased you into the bank’s inner elegance — a hint of chill…
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Quiet Room | Quincy, WA | 2012 Lines soothe our psyches by providing a focus point for the busy mind. Japanese gardens and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright incorporate straight lines that encourage mental rest. The comforting line of a distant horizon is one reason we’re drawn repeatedly to the beach. This dedicated quiet…
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Architecture | Tacoma, WA | 2012 Man’s ambition to create complex objects never fails to grip me. Take big buildings, for instance. Each step of construction is its own process of a thousand steps. Mining > smelting > designing > welding > wiring > furnishing. That they all coalesce into an actual structure — safe,…
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Blank Stares | Bellevue, WA | 2012 My 80 facial nodes are spaced differently than yours. That means a computer or smartphone can differentiate between my nostrils, your nostrils and two big grapes resting nose-width apart on a white plate. A very useful computational ability in this digital age, when it seems the no-nostril crowd…
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