Calling all youth artists to apply for Pier 63′s virtual installations

SEATTLE — Calling all artists! A plan is underway to activate Pier 63 along Seattle’s waterfront with virtual installations.

“Given the backdrop of Elliot Bay and the skyline, it was just the perfect canvas for me to just kind of spread my wings,” said artist Takiyah Ward.

Friends of Waterfront Seattle and City of Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects selected their Future Forward: Artist-In-Residence, Takiyah Ward. Born and raised in Seattle, Ward is leading the call for artists to showcase their work along the waterfront.

The first piece of the new park, Pier 62, is set to open this fall.

“So the plan is to have artists come and create installation work that will also be lit during the night. So it’s an all-inclusive experience of just speaking with to where we are as a society in today’s time, given everything that’s going on,” Ward explained.

Through art, Ward hopes to tell a story about the past, present and future. Pier 58 will explore the past. Our present day will be highlighted at Pier 62. For the future, she’s calling on five youth artists to create virtual installations at Pier 63 in what she calls an “augmented reality experience.”

“Pier 63 is not accessible. And so it’s not something that people will be able to engage with, physically, walk around, touch — kind of like the future is. It’s sort of this figment of imagination of what could it be?” Ward said. “There will be stations on Pier 62 for tourists and viewers to use their phones, scan a QR code and when they lift it up, they’ll be able to see the art.”

Most recently, Ward organized more than a dozen artists to create the Black Lives Matter mural in the Capitol Hill protest zone earlier this summer.

She hopes her latest creative venture will inspire people to think about how to move forward.

“I want people to take away the fact that we are always grappling with what’s next. As humans, as people in a society, we are always trying to figure out what from my past can help us shape our future,” Ward said.

You have to be between 18-24 years old if you want to apply for Pier 63′s virtual installations. For more on the call for artists, and to apply >> https://waterfrontparkseattle.org/program/pier-63-call-for-artists/

Cox Media Group