The sculpture’s silver color—cedar turns silver when exposed to the natural elements—links it to the high-tech world around it. The movement reflected in the piece’s black slate base recalls the swirling grain patterns in the smooth heartwood, heightening the ambiguity of the root itself as water, wood, or wind.

A living nurse tree was planted directly behind The Root to mark the start of this new civic space. Years from now, it will be gone, replaced by a magnificent old tree.

In Longboat-Reed-Rookery, located at the parking garage entrance, metalwork and fiber-optic lighting are woven together to evoke both the blue heron nests in the nearby Mercer Slough and the longboats historically used by Native Americans to travel through the swampy water. Just as birds form, insulate, and soften their nests with a miscellaneous combination of found materials, Corson built this work from a collection of unusual materials. By day it looks like a heron’s nest. But by night, the glowing lighting winds through the silver reeds to reveal the form of the boat floating in the air.