My sign of the times

On a bright September morning, I drove out to Rob Satterwhite’s metal shop on Eagle Harbor Drive. The first time I viewed one of Rob’s sculptures, it made me wonder if I could combine the beauty of his work with my writing, a question I’d been asking myself almost daily since receiving an Individual Artist Grant from Arts & Humanities Bainbridge — a grant to create a sign.

A sign!

Wonderful because, frankly, when else would I find the time to create a sign? It’s not like me to get up in the morning and ask myself what will my next sign be?

And not just any sign.

A sign that reminds us that there is something larger than us. Because there is. And I’m relieved about that. A sign that could be fun to notice on your way to god knows where, and think what’s that? Before you walk over to read it.

Remember the word fun.

When Rob showed me the shape of a heron cut into red steel, I knew two things: I wanted that heron. And I wanted that red.

Rob smiled. And what his smile said to me was, I love red, too.

That was part of the problem. In the Pacific Northwest people don’t often dress or decorate in red. One of my favorite moments occurred right then: Rob didn’t care what most people do any more than I did. He freely paints cold hard steel a soft warm red.

I don’t know the word for this refusal of red. Reserved, probably. But it could just as well be inhibited. “I like muted tones,” my neighbor said about her brown welcome mat, and that seemed about right. My mat, directly across from her door, is garland of red radishes in a yellow setting. I think it bothers her.

There’s a red farmhouse overlooking Manzanita Bay. The last time I rode past it, I jumped off my bike to gaze at it. When a car turned into the drive, I didn’t wave. I don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t know why I just stood there as if possessed. That house — well, really, it was more than the house. It was the woman who lives deep inside of me who loves the Northwest, then can't bear it, then loves it, then longs for somewhere redder — the earth, the sky, the lipstick! Il rosso è bellissima!

I can tell you that turning a sheet of steel into a sign takes a lot of faith, but I’ve learned if you keep your eye on the goal, something amazing eventually happens.

Something did. Our sign is stable. And bellissima, no question.

I nevertheless did not know where it would go.

Someone told me to contact Steve Rabago at Arts & Humanities, so that’s what I did.

Timing is everything.

Steve told me that the new ferry terminal was looking for an installation, and, well, one thing led to another in terms of paperwork on Steve’s part because we were dealing with the state here. Eventually I received an email with approval and a contact name. Our sign would be installed in that little circular area off to the left of the remodeled Bainbridge ferry terminal.

A good example of the other shoe dropping: When it was near time to install our sign, our contact said, “We decided to move in a different direction.”

Those words can make you cry, and I cry easily.

“What direction?” I asked. But she didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to hear me, I couldn’t tell which. “When were you going to let us know?” I said.

“Someone should have called you by now.”

I was not surprised that she said this. I was even less surprised that she didn’t admit that that “someone” was her. It’s a lot easier to say that someone else should have done the right thing than it is to take responsibility. My dislike of bureaucracy grew second only to my distain of art-by-committee, a process that is never about passion but red tape.

Have you seen the commemorative bust of Walter Keys that went up at the new ferry terminal instead of our sign?

The first thing I thought when I saw it was, how can our steel sign compete with a memorial bust of a “veteran of the Spanish-American War,” cast in bronze (bronze!).

It cannot.

Walter is the real thing, which is to say he is the real thing to a public committee: a local business man with a cigar and a fedora. While our sign makes people smile and this makes me happy because I like when my work does that.

My point is, memorial statues are not meant to make anyone happy, they are meant to inform. And to be fair, this is, and should be, the first concern of any administration.

So.

I asked the kind owners of Town & Country Market if they’d consider our sign and they said they’d love to have it. Actually, I don’t think they used the word “love.” That’s me. That sounds more like me.

My friend Fatima, smart about all things artistic, says that our sign “got the better spot.” It’s spring now, and the sun hits our sign at a different angle, but there it is, looking as if it was designed for the very spot it now hangs.

I’ve told everyone I know this story. I’ve even told innocent bystanders waiting for the ferry. And now I’m telling you. Because every reader makes a difference.

But readers, let’s be clear, it was less a choice than a matter of grit. Our sign had nowhere else to go — I did it for the sign.

Mary Lou Sanelli is the author of Every Little Thing, a collection of essays about living in the Northwest. In So Many Words, her newest collection, is due out in September. She lives with her husband on Bainbridge Island. Visit her at www.marylousanelli.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: My sign of the times