Wondering what those metal reeds in Chambers Creek Regional Park are? It’s all about love
If you’ve been to Chambers Creek Regional Park in University Place recently, you’ve probably wondered about the tall metal reeds in cement blocks near the entrance of the bridge, and what they are doing there. Wonder no more because we have the answer.
The tall metal reeds make up a new permanent interactive art installation dubbed “Swoon”.
Swoon is a project partnership between the Economic Development Department, the Pierce County Arts Commission and Pierce County Parks. It was commissioned by the Pierce County Art Commission as an alternative space for people to attach “love locks,” padlocks with messages that are attached to a bridge.
Prior to Swoon, people attached locks to the stainless-steel guardrail cables of Chambers Creek Bridge, which added enough weight to the bridge that it created structural issues.
“There’s a beautiful pedestrian bridge where people attach locks and lock away their love on a bridge,” said Kari Rinn, the Pierce County Economic Development Team Art Specialist, in an interview. “The issue with that is that the bridge was not meant to hold over 3,000 locks which of course adds quite a bit of weight and structurally is very damaging to the bridge in a way that it can compromise the integrity of the bridge.”
The art piece was created by Rohleder Borges Architecture, an architectural designer based in Seattle, and cost $136,700 to create. The funding for the project came from the Pierce County 1% for the Arts Program, a program that directs publicly-funded construction that exceeds $100,000 to allocate 1% of the project budget for public art.
The Pierce County Art Commission selected the design for the art piece because of how well it connected with the park. The tall reeds are meant to represent the park’s grass, and the material that they are made out of represents the industrial history of the site.
“They kind of have a little bit of an industrial feel with the steel and the concrete, which really relates to the concrete relics that are there in the park already, but then also has this kind of natural and organic feel of those reeds blowing in the wind,” Rinn said. “We just really connected with the piece and we thought that the piece was just a really good fit for the space.”
The art piece is able to hold approximately 6,300 locks and a place for people to toss away their keys instead of throwing them into the water.
“We have receptacles that people are encouraged to place their key in for good luck. Traditionally, I think in some places they are thrown into the water and we definitely wanted to make sure that that was not a practice that would continue on the site,” Rinn said.
Modern keys are typically made of nickel silver, brass or steel, which could leech harmful substances into the water and damage the local ecosystem.
The art piece was originally installed in January and is ready for people to attach their locks, but the concrete ADA path was not completed until July 21.
The county will not remove any locks from the new art piece, which is located in the Central Meadow, unless they are deemed unsafe or damaging to the artwork, according to the Pierce County website.
As for the locks that were attached to the bridge, the county asked the public to remove their locks in December of last year and were given until April 16. Locks that went unclaimed were removed and recycled.
This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 6:55 AM.
