A Sailish Welcome

Photo & Text © 2010 Kim- Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved; no use, alteration, reproduction or republishing in any media.

This is the new public art sculpture by Marvin Oliver, 2010, installed just last Saturday at Salmon Bay Natural Area, a little developed overlook along the ship canal just west of the Locks. Oliver, a prolific artist in many media, is Professor of American Indian Studies and Art at the University of Washington, and serves as Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Native American Art at the Burke Museum. This bronze sculpture is of a stylized welcome figure/indigenous person in generic Sailish style hat and ceremonial robe holding a salmon wheel crest of two salmon forming a ring of life around beautiful art glass eggs, representing the life cycle. Look carefully and you will see a stylized blue salmon with intricate cut outs, and a red one following it. This welcome figure welcomes the various kinds of salmon which are currently making their way from the ocean through Puget Sound, entering the ship canal and going up the fish ladder by the Locks to Salmon Bay and tributaries beyond. Their offspring will reverse the journey and repeat the cycle in their amazing dance of life.