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Walk to the Mountain

Gloria Bornstein

Harborview Medical Center

Bronze and stone plaques connect the Harborview campus to Mount Rainier.

Gloria Bornstein. Walk to the Mountain (detail), 2009. Cast and etched bronze with granite. Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: Spike Mafford

When Gloria Bornstein set out to make Walk to the Mountain, she was charged with unifying the Harborview campus while engaging pedestrians on the sidewalk along 9th Avenue. Inspired by art as a means to healing, she took a walk along the street to imagine what she might create. “The first thing I noticed was Mount Rainier,” she says. “The sun was out, and the mountain was out in all its glory. It was surreal—it looked like a giant ice cream cone.” In that moment, Bornstein knew she wanted “to bring the mountain and the forest to the campus.”

Bornstein created a series of bronze and stone plaques featuring fractal patterns from the forest floor, the body’s circulatory system, human bone, eggshell, and leaf veins. The plaques are embedded in the sidewalk along 9th Avenue, starting from the corner at James Street and traveling on an axis with Mount Rainier to the corner of Alder Street. Landscape plantings along the sidewalk help summon the experience of walking through the forest and include various species that are native to the Northwest, many of which have medicinal properties.
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Based in Seattle, Bornstein makes prints, drawings, performances, and sculptures in a variety of media, in addition to public art. Her public artworks appear at sites around the world, from Washington to Tokyo, and include the redesign of the landmark International Fountain at Seattle Center as well as the surrounding park area. She also created the bronze whale forms beside the fountain, based on a Salish legend of whales swimming from Lake Union to Elliott Bay.
Gloria Bornstein. Walk to the Mountain (detail), 2009. Cast and etched bronze with granite. Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: Spike Mafford
Gloria Bornstein. Walk to the Mountain (detail), 2009. Cast and etched bronze with granite. Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: Spike Mafford
Gloria Bornstein. Walk to the Mountain (detail), 2009. Cast and etched bronze with granite. Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: 4Culture

About the Location

Harborview Medical Center

For more than a century, Harborview Medical Center has functioned as a unique community and regional resource. It is a county hospital, a teaching and research institution, a regional trauma and burn center, and the primary health care provider for many low-income and disenfranchised people in the community. Harborview embraces its mission of treating everybody…

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