Torus Torum

Benson Shaw

King County Correctional Facility

The arcs and arches of this relief sculpture add texture and movement to an otherwise dispiriting setting.

Benson Shaw. Torus Torum, 1984. Concrete with fiberglass. King County Correction Facility, Seattle, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: joefreemanjunior.com

Patterns of overlapping and interlaced arches and arcs repeat at various sizes in Torus Torum, Benson Shaw’s eight-panel relief sculpture, located in the plaza at the Jefferson Street entrance to the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle.

The smooth, rounded high relief surfaces of the panels create geometric designs in which shapes and lines often start in one panel and travel into the next. “Torus” is the Latin word describing a ring shape and “torum” is a conjugation of the same word; Shaw titled his work with these words to reflect the way his design is composed of variations on a single form.

The artwork is made of fiberglass reinforced concrete, a lightweight material created by spraying a slurry of water, sand, cement, and chopped glass fibers onto a mold, then building up the concrete with several applications before a steel cage is attached to the back of the concrete. Once dry and removed from the mold, the piece was lightly sandblasted to give it a very smooth surface.

Based in Seattle, Benson Shaw makes public sculptures and architectural installations in a variety of media. He has lived and worked in Arizona, Colorado, Sweden, New Mexico, California, and Washington.

About the Location

King County Correctional Facility

Located on a busy corner in downtown Seattle, the Seattle Division of the King County Jail opened in 1986. Today four permanent public artworks are sited at the correctional facility. A year after the building became operational, landscape architect Martha Schwartz designed its colorful entry plaza and Benson Shaw created Torus Torum for the south…

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