The artist who created an iconic West Seattle sculpture is asking for support in his quest to save it from being demolished instead of replaced.
That’s the Paragon, installed more than 20 years ago at what’s now known as həʔapus Village Park and Shoreline Habitat (formerly T-107 Park) along West Marginal Way near the Duwamish Tribe Longhouse. We heard from artist Don Fels over the weekend – he explains that this dates back to when he was the lead artist on the West Seattle Cultural Trail on Alki 25+ years ago – and continued it down West Marginal Way. He picks up the story from there, in the email he sent us explaining why he’s asking for community words of support:
I created three sculptures there, including the Geo-Slice, which tells the geomorphic history of the site, and the Paragon, which features a scaled-down wooden framework of a halibut schooner designed and built in Seattle in 1923. The sculpture is now in mortal danger!
The sculpture was a broad ranging collaboration between me, the Port of Seattle, the City of Seattle, the Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle City Light and people from the Croatian community of West Seattle. I obtained the plans for the original Paragon, which is still fishing up in Alaska, and then Michael Vlahovich, a third-generation boat builder, whose grandmother lived on the site, built the wooden ‘boat’ with his boat-building students at Bates Technical College.
Under the boat are several panels giving the history of the site- telling how the Native people who lived and fished there were forced out by destruction of the habitat, how immigrants from (the then) Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy moved in, often squatting, to live and build boats. The Port bulldozed down their settlement, which even though the Port arranged to have the sculpture created on the site, they let me acknowledge in the text I produced for the sculpture.
Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture was charged with maintaining the wood boat structure, which they failed to do. There is now considerable rot and it is infested with carpenter ants. Suddenly, their solution to years of their neglect: tear it down. To counter that very real threat, I am organizing a rebuild of the wooden boat (the steel and concrete structure is sound). In very short order I have garnered support from the Center for Wooden Boats, the Burke Museum, the Port of Seattle, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, Allied Arts, and thanks to the great help from Ken (Workman), the Duwamish Tribe. I continue to reach out to other potential partners, and am certain there will be many others.
At present we are planning for a community rebuilding of the boat next year. I would WELCOME volunteers, donations of materials, etc etc. But for now I’m looking to get letters from the community sent to the Office of Arts and Culture from people who want the sculpture to remain and be fixed up. They can be directed to the Deputy Director, Kelly Davidson. Her email is Kelly.Davidson@seattle.gov.
Fels is meeting with her on Tuesday morning and adds, “If anyone feels compelled to write her, it would be wonderfully helpful if they did so before then, so that she sees there is real support to save the sculpture. I want them to take ‘deaccessioning’ (i.e. destroying it) off their agenda. This is very important ASAP, because once they officially stamp it ‘deaccessioned,’ the sculpture goes from being an artwork to a corpse.” If you can spare a moment to email Kelly Davidson, Don adds, please cc him, at donatofels@gmail.com.
