KPLU Local News
(2010-10-31)
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Artist Katy Krantz created work based on graffiti written by detainees inside Seattle's former INS building. Krantz now leases an art studio in the building, which has been rechristened "INScape."
Photo courtesy of Wendy Johnson
This is where some foreigners were held days, weeks, even months only to be deported.
While others held tiny U.S. flags and were sworn in as new citizens.
Artist Ladan Yalzadeh emigrated from Iran and in 1995 got her citizenship papers here.
She figured she was done with the building.
And then 15 years later, she returned as a tour guide.
"And what I found is I couldn't but help but give them some of those personal stories. Like, 'Oh, this was the room I was interviewed in. Oh my god, I remember coming at 4 o'clock in the morning 20 days in a row to stand in line,'"she recalls.
As she began telling these personal stories, she realized this was a cathartic experience for her.
Art Installations at INScape's Open House, Oct. 6, 2010 |
The building is now called INScape. And art is everywhere. On the third floor, a mish-mash of kinetic sculptures form the SmashPutt, the wildest and craziest miniature golf course.
And in the basement, a skeleton made entirely out of black glass, holding a burnt U.S. passport, sits in a jail cell where angry music throbs. It's the work of artist Evan Schauss.
For more than 70 years, the building catered to immigration services. And at one time the fourth floor also served as the U.S. Assay offices, which is where prospectors came to sell their gold to the government.
When Immigration outgrew the facility and moved some services to Tacoma, the building sat empty for four years. The government put it up for auction and in 2008, a group of investors bought it for $4.4 million.
Their original intention was to convert a quarter of it into artist studios and the rest into commercial office space.
But the poor real estate market and a man named Sam Farrazaino changed their minds.
He's a sculptor who also builds and develops spaces for artists to use. Farrazaino knows how tough it can be for artists to do their work.
"The problem is finding space that's inexpensive enough for them to create while they're paying their apartment rent and buying art materials. There's not a lot of that inexpensive space in Seattle because it keeps getting developed. So artists tend to be the placeholders for landowners and developers, to fill the space until the time for development is ripe."
The renovation is estimated to cost $3 million and eventually house 90 artist studios. Space leases for $1 to $1.40 per square foot.
Farrazaino had always been drawn to the historic building. Now he's finding artifacts - like old tools and a notebook of Spanish words translated into English - and he feels a deep respect for all that's happened here.
"You are walking into that history and into that experience of so many people. I don't sense a lot of the bad. I sense more of the good. Some people are totally opposite," he says.
Paper artist Katy Krantz recently moved to Seattle from New York. She knew nothing about the building. But she knew what she was looking for.
"A large enough space and I also wanted natural light and it needed to be affordable. And it needed to be somewhere I could ride my book to," she says.
Now she works out of a second-floor studio with a view of Seattle's Chinatown International District. She pays $400 a month and one of the perks she likes about working here is being surrounded by other artists.
"As an artist you're kind of already a little bit on the outskirts of normal society. People are like, 'What do you do all day? How do you really make money?' So it's nice to be around people you don't have to explain all that to."
But she's also attracted to the building's past. She made black paper cutouts of the grafitti covering the walls in two recreation yards. Detainees used tar softened in the sun to write their names and the countries they came from.
Krantz says it's important to preserve the past.
"It shouldn't just be this flip over experience where it was the INS building and now it's an artist building. I think too often you pave over history, you know?"
So the open house was a way to embrace the building's history, even if it felt a little like touring Alcatraz, seeing the infirmary and the booking area and the cells.
But then there were all the other sights and sounds like a woman dancing in mulch, as part of the Manifold Motion group;and music in Bonnie Foster's puppeteer's studio.
The art installations, a project called "Passages," was curated by Christian French .
Project developers want to continue these tours and open studios. There are plans to transform the lobby into a cafe. And they've begun collecting the stories of both immigrants as well as the people who worked here.
Florangela Davila, KPLU News
The INScape website
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