Dori suggests SDOT scraps art project to save thousands

The Seattle Department of Transportation is looking to pay some artists to add creativity to Seattle’s bridges. But KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson believes he has a cheaper solution for the arts.

“Just put a voicemail message on the old phone (at the towers),” he said. “Tell people to call it up, transcribe what they say. Release that as art. There, I just saved you $10,000.”

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SDOT has ads out to hire Seattle artists for a pair of project-based artist residencies.

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture is looking for a lighting artist, or lighting artist team, to “undertake an in-depth exploration of Seattle’s three historic bascule bridges: the University, Fremont and Ballard bridges, and create a conceptual plan for lighting each bridge.” The project project pays $15,000 ($5,000 for residency, $10,000 for concept, scope and cost estimates in the lighting plan).

They are also seeking a practicing, published poet, fiction, or creative non-fiction writer for a artist residency in the northwest tower of the 1917 Fremont Bridge. According to SDPT, “the selected writer will undertake an in-depth exploration of the bridge and write a piece in response to the experience.” The project pays $10,000 ($5,000 for residency, $5,000 for project, presentation, documentation). The residency will include an ongoing public component such as a blog or social media posts, in addition to community engagement events. The writing is to represent or illuminate some aspect of the bridge and the bridge’s history, be it real or metaphorical. The two towers on the north end of the bridge are unoccupied, and the 13 feet by 8 feet northwest tower will be used as the studio for this residency opportunity.

The posts say SDOT “established artists” living in Seattle or within 100 miles of Seattle are eligible to apply. The application deadline for both positions is Feb. 16.

This is not the first art project associated with the Fremont bridge’s towers. In the 1990s, Rodman Miller’s neon “Rapunzel” and “Elephant and Child” were installed in the bridge’s northern towers, where they remain. In 2009, artist Kristen Ramirez was selected as the bridge’s first artist-in-residence and produced a temporary sound installation on the bridge combining oral histories with found sound.

This project is funded by SDOT’s requirement for 1 percent of its budget to go toward public art.

Dori called it “ridiculous” to give $25,000 to artists in this manner, even if that is a small portion of the overall budget.

“You know what, you take 500, 1,000, 10,000 examples of nothing and add them all together and we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars that is wasted on crap like this,” he said.