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A public-art mystery spanning nearly a century, featuring a West Seattle artist and West Seattle collector
(Photo courtesy Clay Eals)
Both on the Seattle Now & Then website and in tomorrow’s Seattle Times Pacific NW magazine, West Seattle journalist/historian Clay Eals tells a mystery story. What you see in the photo above is part of it – one of more than 30 metal art panels telling the story of “The Evolution of Lighting.” They were owned and displayed by Seattle City Light and were supposed to be brought along when SCL moved into a new headquarters in the Seattle Municipal Tower downtown in 1996. But – they weren’t. Most of them have been found, but the whereabouts of a few remain a mystery. There are multiple West Seattle angles here – metal artist John W. Elliott made most of the panels in 1935 and worked from a studio in his West Seattle home on Gatewood Hill; 90 years later, all but three of the panels were discovered and acquired earlier this year by West Seattle collector Mike Shaughnessy. You can see the missing panels in Clay’s story; perhaps someone who reads it will solve the mystery (not just of the missing panels’ whereabouts but why the metal art wasn’t brought along in SCL’s HQ move)!