UW Sculpture Gives Rain An Artistic Role -- New York Artist's Work Is Visible From New Wing Of Medical Center

Visitors waiting anxiously in the new wing of the University of Washington Medical Center can ease their minds by gazing out on a tranquil landscape sculpture that changes with the weather.

The untitled work by New York City artist Mary Miss combines simple materials - sod and stone, timbers and boards, concrete and metal - in a subtle arrangement.

Nine irregularly shaped concrete pads suggest a giant footprint when viewed from the hospital waiting rooms that overlook the sculpture. The pads are white when dry, but when it rains they collect water and turn into reflecting ponds.

``I really wanted to find something for people to look down on, and something that wasn't just a single image,'' Miss said in a telephone interview. For her first work in the Northwest, she used the rain ``in a positive way as something that alters the piece from day to day.''

Wavy shelves of turf lined with small gray stones add another pattern, and the sculpture also incorporates wooden benches and walkways as well as an intriguing array of metal fences.

A visitor who yields to curiosity and walks between the closely spaced, 6-foot-tall fences may feel confined despite the open mesh. When the visitor emerges into the grassy, terraced center of the sculpture, the effect is like stepping from a forest trail into an alpine meadow.

Miss hopes visitors will explore the work in just such ways. ``I wanted . . . to get people drawn in and try to walk it,'' she said. The sculpture is on the southeast portion of the hospital grounds, near the Montlake Bridge.

Miss, 46, has created outdoor sculptures in New York City, London, Boston, St. Louis and Tempe, Ariz. She was a 1986 Guggenheim fellow, and she's won three awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The medical center artwork, commissioned in 1986, cost $173,000. Funding came from the Washington State Arts Commission's program for art in public places.

Miss was selected by a panel of artists.