Sculpture to grace Medina yard

Aug 31, 2000

Chris Solomon

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

MEDINA - Talk about one-upping the neighbors' garden gnome.

One of the world's most famous living sculptors stood in the parking lot of the local elementary school here yesterday, watching a crane load 144 tons of outdoor art onto tractor-trailers. With a police escort, the trucks then delivered the pieces to the waterfront estate of Costco's co-founder, Jeffrey Brotman, and his wife, Susan.

The parts of Richard Serra's untitled sculpture will be assembled over the next few days into a wavy installation about 120-feet long.

Serra, of New York, is regarded as a master of minimalist sculpture. His art is masculine, frequently metallic - and monumental in size, its weight measured with truck scales.

So it was a shock to see a Serra - all 288,000 pounds of it - trundled to the Brotmans' hedged yard on Overlake Drive West.

The six identical plates, each over 13-feet high and more than 20- feet long - are curved, like slices of a cone. Made in Germany of an oxidizing steel, they will be placed in different arrangements and will rust into a rich amber color over time.

Depending on taste, one might see the plates as handsome shards of a sunset bent by the curve of the earth, or perhaps scrap metal from the bow of the Queen Mary. Serra's other work has similarly polarized viewers. His work has been featured at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Yet in 1989 a 73-ton sculpture was removed from the front of a federal building in New York after complaints.

Now Serra comes to a yard in Medina.

At a time when fancy mansions rise frequently along the sleepy shores of this Old Money city, it takes a lot to make drivers slow down and rubberneck. Judging by the brake lights of passing cars yesterday, Serra's work made an impression.

In this discreet community, strollers passed judgment with arched eyebrows. Children showed more enthusiasm, mistaking the curved plates for pieces of a new skateboard park.

Police escorted the mammoth pieces from the staging area at Medina Elementary to the Brotmans' property, an estate described by the King County Assessor's Office as 2.4 acres worth about $9 million.

"I think if you are an interested admirer of outdoor art, this is spectacular," said Maryann Pember, who had come to watch the show with her husband, Charles.

But at the same time the Pembers could only shake their heads at the overall changes they have seen in their waterfront neighborhood of 3,000 people since they moved in during the late 1960s.

Serra said he did not know how much the Brotmans paid for the piece because his staff is handling the sale. But some of Serra's sculptures have sold for more than $1 million. The Brotmans could not be reached for comment.

"I would have to withold judgment until I see it in place," said Blanche Player, the Brotmans' next-door neighbor and a Medina resident for more than 30 years. "Everything that the Brotmans do is very, very nicely done," she added.

Chris Solomon's phone message number is 206-515-5646. His e-mail address is:

csolomon@seattletimes.com