Seattle considers itself a bit of a “hip” arty city and you can see evidence of this everywhere you go.  Along the waterfront there are a number of sculptures in our “sculpture park”, we have a large amount of urban art like the troll under the bridge eating a VW Beetle – I’ll photograph that one one day.  We have weird paintings and murals around the city – we even have a gum wall (that’s a wall covered in chewing gum) and of course the “Hammering Man”, a 60 foot animated sculpture outside the Art Museum that is literally a metal dude with a hammer! (No I don’t get that one either).

So we are progressive, and cool and very arty, as you would expect from the city that gave us Jimmy Hendrix and Grunge music.

What’s unusual is that you tend to encounter the “art” in the most surprising places.  For example, the Seattle Public Library.  This is an amazing building that actually justifies a photograph in itself (an idea for another day).  The building is predominantly glass and is bigger at the top that it is at the bottom – really cool.

Inside the Library they have brightly colored escalators (check out my posting on January 28th) and then they have the “Red Room”.  This room is the subject of today’s posting and it’s quite appropriately named.  Basically the Red Room is a room that is completely red! (Told you it had the right name).  The floor, walls and ceiling are all red.  Why is that, you may ask.  What purpose does it serve?

Well, I have no bloody idea!  I even asked at the Library and they just said “because” and then nodded at me in a knowing way.  So they don’t know either.  The bottom line is Seattle is cool and arty, the Public Library is cool and arty, and the Red Room is cool and “RED”.

Does make an interesting picture though…

Carter and Master Chief had a tough day at work today and needed some love – a bit of a cuddle in fact.