Sculpture: Olympic Iliad

At the base of the Seattle Space Needle sits Alexander Liberman's Olympic Iliad. This orange-y red always makes me look when I walk by. The way the structure seems to cascade to the lawn below, makes me want to walk under it. It's amazing to me that more people don't climb this structure. It reminds me of those playgrounds I used to go to when I was a kid that had those structures made up of tunnels, boxes and slides.


Liberman, an Editorial Director for Conde Naste, made these metal sculptures from industrial objects. I like the balance he creates with these objects. This looks like it was once a solid structure that started to re-assemble itself and stopped... frozen in a precarious way. Move one piece and it would come crashing down. The result are massive tubular shapes that seem to float in it's own sense of space.

A structure that seems to be struggling to stand; to right itself again; to break free and run away.

Location: Seattle Center's South lawn, West of the Space Needle