The Gum Wall Expands

Photo & Text Copyright 2007 Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved, including reproduction or republishing.

If you visited the gum wall at the Market Theater in Post Alley in the last year, you would notice that it has grown both thicker and expanded to include the wall past the theater entrance. This public work needs a curator, and I predict someone will publish a book of photos about the wall as it morphs over time, complete with lecture and book signing at Elliott Bay Books. ;^) The idea of the gum wall is even moving to other places. . .I've seen photos of something similar at Pier 39 in San Francisco. There are probably other locations. Lets hear about them. Is the gum wall phenom global yet? Please post what you know here in the comments section. Does your city have one?

This gum wall began with theater patrons waiting outside, placing a blob of chewing gum on the wall and sticking a penny or other coin in it. The coins would be picked off by other people, and the wall was cleaned of gum two or three times before the powers that be gave up and the wall became an interactive work of art. Now people chew wads of gum and shape letters and figures from it, as well as adding the conventional blobs. People seek out bright colored gums to chew and add. The older gum slowly crusts and cracks. I wonder how much DNA is represented on that wall? The first wall people started doing this on (to the left in this photo) has become so thick and crowded that people now regularly place blobs in the entryway and around the box office window and down the brick wall past the theater entryway. For more photos and close detail of how the work looks this week, see my More Seattle Stuff page.