Trellises, Guardrail + Gazebo

Simpson and Georgiades

Steel Lake Park

Functional sculptures celebrate popular park activities—and a lesser known history.

Steel Lake Park in Federal Way thrums with activity: fishing and boating, swimming and skateboarding, games and picnics. It also includes a series of artworks by Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades that speak to the history and recreational uses of the site.

Four steel trellises with benches feature linear designs. A gazebo fit for two has a boat-like shape, with ornamentation near its roof supports. And a decorative guardrail overlooks the lake, with different imagery highlighted in each section. Several design motifs recur across all of these pieces: fish, boats, dogs playing Frisbee, and people dancing—the latter a nod to the dance halls that thrived in the location in the 1930s and 1940s, when it was home to two popular resorts.

In 1995, King County and the City of Federal Way established an interlocal agreement to provide for stewardship and continuing care of the artwork. It was the first-ever partnership agreement regarding the long-term care and ownership of public artwork established with a suburban city.

Based in Wisconsin, Simpson and Georgiades are a collaborative artist team. Together they create site-specific sculptural installations for public spaces and both hold MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the time the Steel Lake Park sculptures were made, they were teaching at Western Washington University; today they teach at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.