The culmination of decades of work was celebrated late last week at Marshall Park where friends of the late Betty Bowen gathered to honor her and her patronage of the arts.
Bowen, a lifelong Queen Anne resident and a profound lover of nature and the arts, died in 1979. But her effort to reconfigure Marshall Park at West Highland Drive along the Soutwestern porch of Queen Anne, into a gathering place featuring great artwork continued with the help of volunteers, Seattle Parks and the Seattle Parks Foundation. The latter was at the forefront in restoring paver artwork that lines the cast in the cement walkway. About 50 friends and volunteers recognized the effort, particularly of volunteer Barbara Huston, Friday afternoon.
"She was unique," Huston said of Bowen. "She was very supportive of the arts and she knew a great artist when she saw one coming."
Tom Zachary, who has known Huston since 1992 when he became her landscaper, helped set up the event and volunteered by gathering professionals who could help restore the pavers, said the park was a personal place for everybody. The park's restoration is really a "story of appreciation," he said.
Last month a final bronze plaque, fabricated by Jeff Barlow, was cast into the concrete walkway. It recognized the efforts of all the volunteers and identified each artist's work. Laura Brodax cleaned and preserved the mosaics.
Among her numerous achievements, Bowen was a lifestyle writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and assistant director of the Seattle Art Museum.
After her death in 1977, Victor Steinbrueck organized the building of the viewpoint. The architect designed a paver a did 10 other mosaic artists Guy Anderson, Harold Balazs, Kenneth Callahan,Richard Gilkey, Morris Graves, Charles Stokes and Margaret Tompkins.[[In-content Ad]]
