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A Beautiful Love Letter to the Alaskan Way Viaduct
With the viaduct's days numbered, local artist Paul Komada creates a multimedia homage.
This article originally appeared in the June 2017 issue of Seattle magazine.
Seattle artist Paul Komada’s new multimedia installation, Momument in Memory: Abstract Alaskan Way, encompasses paintings, ambient sound and chroma-key technology (think of the “blue screen” that weather people use). It’s a multimedia love letter to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a 1950s structure whose days are dwindling as the new tunnel construction nears completion. Komada gained a local following over the past several years with his hand-knit works and projects in a variety of formats. In this installation, his paintings will be hung around the exhibition space forming an enclosure in the middle of the gallery. Audiences will see projected video and hear an ambient audio track of traffic and music along with images of the Viaduct inside the space. “It’s so enormous and imposing—also noisy. Yet people tend to forget it’s there,” says Komada, “so the exhibition is not necessarily a good-bye. Because I think for many people, it’s already gone.”
Times vary. Free. 6/1–6/29. Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Place S; 206.296.7580; galleries.4culture.org.
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