World’s Greenest RV

There are thirty-seven artworks in the Bellwether 2010: Art Walk Bellevue biennial, stretching from City Hall to Downtown Park (on view through October 17), but the one that catches the most eyes is the most improbable: what appears to be an abandoned, old-fashioned, “canned ham”–shaped trailer in the Kemper Development parking lot at 500 Bellevue Way. It’s called Ghost Trailer, created by J. D. Perkin and Anne Thompson, and it occupies the vacant corner location of the vanished sign for the old Safeway store.

A ghost trailer rises in Bellevue’s artsiest parking lot. Photograph courtesy of J. D. Perkin

“Had the economy not done what it did, that lot would be a building right now,” says Andi Meucci, Kemper’s maven for landscape design and visual art (see Curator’s Eye, p. 28). “Now it’s more a work in progress. So we waved our magic wand and made this happen.”

With help from Perkin and Thompson. “We first installed Ghost Trailer at Tryon Creek  State Park in Portland,” says Perkin. (See the original forest installation at jdperkin.com/installation.html.) “Installing it in the old Safeway lot next to a busy intersection was a little bit unnerving, but we really like the setting. It’s all about contrast in Bellevue. The angle I really like is when you look though it at the skyscrapers – it’s very cinematic, like looking though the past into the present.”

Actually, Ghost Trailer is all about the future, as is the eco-themed Bellwether 2010 show as a whole. Perkin and Thompson attached 30-percent-transparent shade-cloth screen to a steel frame and adorned it with driftwood, moss, ferns and other drought-resistant plants sprouting in completely biodegradable, glue-free coconut-fiber containers. The whole thing folds flat for easy transport and reassembly.

“It’s very much a car culture in Bellevue,” says Perkin. “All the more reason to place a piece that can only be fully experienced from a pedestrian point of view next to an incredibly busy intersection. All those people in cars are very close to a contemplative experience but miss out on it. That hopefully makes Ghost Trailer all the more poignant.”

And it’s gotten even greener since the above picture was taken. “Ghost Trailer has grown on me,” says Meucci.