Forest Gates

For each courtroom the artist designed a set of metal panels set into the gates that divide the spectators' area from the proceedings of the court.  The panels are intricately cut stainless steel with an etched surface of detailed imagery.

The gates are an array of local plants that grew in the vicinity of the courthouse prior to the development of Seattle as a city in the nineteenth century.  Among the plants depicted present in the gates are deerfoot, salal, Nootka rose, snowberry, cedar, horsetail, alder, and mock orange.  All plants were chosen because they played a role in the daily life of the indigenous people of the Seattle area.  These images represent a small sampling of the vast  pharmacopoeia essential to Indian life and can be found among us still.  Some are cultivated and hybridized as landscape elements, some still found wild in our woods and open spaces.  Together the gate images form a dictionary of plant use, a delicate reminder of presence and purpose.