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-Today we're at Populous Seattle here in Pioneer Square.
The building is a 1905 historic warehouse that has been
adapted to a 120-room hotel.
It also is serving as a gallery and so immediately as you enter
the hotel you're greeted with these five large
canvases above you.
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You'll ascend the stairs and the restaurant has pieces, the
cafe has pieces, the hallways have pieces.
Each elevator landing on every floor
has pieces.
The rooms, they all have artwork.
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The artwork at the hotel is all for sale and so
if you find something that you appreciate or you
love you can take it home and what that does
is not only support the artist that made it but it
creates a future opportunity for another artist.
The environment that we've
created here with the artwork is intentional to honor
the history of the neighborhood and the artists that have been
a part of this for a very long time.
All of the artwork in the hotel was created next door.
We would bring in artists in groups
of like 10 to 15 over a period of three months and set them up
studio space we handmade all the canvases for the
project and so the artists would really come in
you know and develop their painting.
I’m particularly interested in artists who haven't
arrived at like an answer, so I’m always interested
in art that is still asking questions itself and
so the artist process is in development you know
they're working through the ideas and techniques
and process that isn't a definitive statement,
but it's a point on their timeline of discovery.
And so a lot of it, you know, is expressive.
A lot of it you'll see is either abstracted
or altered in a way that it's not a realist picture of,
you know, a mountain.
It's this energy in exchange of concepts.
There is over 40 artists that are represented in this initial
collection, which has translated to over 50 original pieces.
And then there's, I think, over 200 limited edition prints
that were created out of a small collection of
originals for the rooms.
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Opening a hotel was very interesting, but now that
it's alive and guests are really the people who
bring life to the space.
So if you haven't been, I really encourage you to come down
and experience it for yourself.
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-The Populous Seattle lobby, restaurant and bar are
open to the public daily and self-guided art tours
are available on request.
For more information, including hours and location,
go to PopulousSeattle.com.