‘Windfall’: Catch it while you can
Friday, July 9th, 2010Last month, an engaging temporary public art installation, “Windfall,” opened at Seattle Center next to the new Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens.
Created by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio in Seattle, “Windfall” consists of some 1,000 cast iron wind chimes hanging in the trees on both sides of a walkway. The ringing is sublime and the bliss is unexpected in a busy urban environment. You can see how it catches people off guard when – as they’re hurrying by – they stop and stare into the trees.
Upon hearing that it’s a temporary installation, many of them say it should stay permanently. The short answer is it won’t. So you should go see it before it’s dismantled in mid-September.
Like the new Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens, “Windfall” honors the late Peter Donnelly who, starting in the latter half of the 20th century, invigorated the city’s arts scene.
In an e-mail, Han and Mihalyo said they sought to highlight this new public space by providing visitors with “a heightened experience of the spatial qualities of wind and its impressive volume.” They chose bells to do this due to chimes’ association with the cycles of life and birth.
“We wanted this artwork to be a contribution to the landscape experience, filling the available site without overwhelming the primary experience,” they wrote.
With the garden completed only about a week before the planned opening, the artists had no time to test their idea. They worried “Windfall” would seem either not large enough or too large. They wondered, too, whether the chime “feathers” – made of eucalyptus wood veneer – might appear “too artificial.”
Mihalyo and Han designed the chimes and fabricated prototypes before finding a company, Travis Pattern – N.E.W. Foundry near Colville, to manufacture them. After the castings arrived, the artists had three assistants help for about 3 weeks, applying metal primer, drilling, tying knots and fabricating the feathers.
The idea of making the installation permanent did come up when the project was proposed, and some members of the artist selection committee recommended a longer-term installation. Ultimately, however, Seattle Center and the city’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs decided it would be most appropriate to make “Windfall” temporary.
There were concerns about the health of the trees, which could be damaged if people yanked the chimes down. The materials are “very ephemeral,” said city Public Art Project Manager Patricia Hopper. “It simply could not last forever.” And, to make a longer lasting exhibit would have exceeded the project’s $24,000 budget.
Besides these practical issues, there is the purpose of “Windfall.” Hopper explained it’s to celebrate the opening of the gardens and draw people into the new space. The work is something “that thrills for the moment and then lives on.”
And it will.
When the installation comes down, Mihalyo and Han plan to give the bells to people who come to Seattle Center Sept. 16-17. They say this will allow the memory of “Windfall” to be dispersed out into the city to the backyards and porches of residents who experienced it.
