VAUGHN BELL STUDIO
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​PUBLIC ART MASTER PLAN FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC UTILITIES
​DRAINAGE AND WASTEWATER
Drainage and Wastewater Art Master Plan Book 1
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Drainage and Wastewater Art Master Plan Book 2
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Commissioned by the City of Seattle
Office of Arts & Culture
Seattle Public Utilities
Written by Vaughn Bell
Graphic Design by Amy Harrington
Completed 2017

The Drainage and Wastewater Art Master Plan guides 1% for Art
investments related to Drainage and Wastewater’s work. The Plan was
developed through a comprehensive, months-long process of research
and staff and stakeholder discussions.

Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater manages and maintains
the flow of water through our city. By zooming out to see the connection
of clouds, pipes, streets, swales and Sound, we begin to grasp the scale and importance of the work that drainage does. Seattle is a city of water, with plentiful rain and interlaced with creeks, lakes and Puget Sound.
The context of Seattle as a city, the unique environment in which we are
situated, and the history we inherit all inform how public art practice takes place here.

Art can make us experience water differently. We are in need of experiences that make us see the water, and see the system. We need experiences that erase invisibility and encourage comprehension of our place in our local ecology. We need to notice how our home is part of the watershed, how our car drives a street that is a stream. Witnessing the work of Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater, and seeing the flow of water through our environment, offers us the chance to experience our place as a complex ecology. Likewise, art can make the connection to science through acts of translation and creative communication.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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