Last summer, I started a project: drawing the Alaskan Way Viaduct in its final years. This highway from the fifties is a loud, ugly, overbearing monstrosity that blocks the waterfront, drowns out conversations, spews tire dust everywhere, dominates the cityscape, and reminds us of a less enlightened age when freeways obliterating the human-scale landscape seemed like a good idea.

Well, here’s the thing: I kind of like it. I mean, I’m still looking forward to the party we’ll have when the viaduct is finally demolished, but by drawing it I’ve gained something like an aesthetic appreciation for the damned thing. Susan Sontag observed that photography favors traditionally “ugly” subjects, conferring on them a kind of beauty. I’d add that a century and a half of looking at photographs has made us all appreciate the ugly a bit more in person, too.

Looking at it so much made me realize that it actually has a design, something I’d not previously been aware of. Someone at some point had to think up those giant blocky arch sections that recede into the distance; they’re not completely accidental. It has a color, too, closer to burnt umber than to grey, which I think is the color that everyone assumes it is.

It has an uneasy but nevertheless affectionate relationship with its surroundings. This little Frankfurter stand sits nestles so cosily in its shadow, while the shiny glassy blue and coffee-colored post-modern office buildings behind it tap their toes impatiently as they wait their turn to finally face the water.

I can’t imagine what was going through the mind of the person who decided to tag it with “Oprah.” Maybe something to do with her giving all those cars away.

Landscape painting came into its own when rural life was beginning to disappear. Pining for the soon-to-be-lost is sometimes a shortcut to aesthetic appreciation. I can’t say I will be sorry or nostalgic when the viaduct is demolished, nor when the automobile era finally grinds to a smoky, smelly halt at that final traffic light. But for now, I’m taking the time to appreciate the charms of the ugly and embarrassing while it’s still with us. I’ll be back under its deafening canopy next summer, too, with my sketchbook. (If I miss your call that’s probably why.)

After six weeks of figure drawing in a very crowded studio, my University of Washington Drama grads were finally able to spread out a bit. We were lucky enough to score a field trip to the Millworks building in Seattle’s SODO Industrial district, and had the entire two-story vacant former sawmill to ourselves.

The building is mostly empty, its gorgeous beams and planks exposed, but the few items that remain are intriguing. They lent themselves to oblique narratives once model Amanda got hold of them: several potbellied stoves, wall-mounted phones, a traffic light, a piano. The last one particularly piqued our curiosity about the former occupants: Did the mill provide live music for its employees while they toiled? Or perhaps they just had really good Christmas parties, a la Mr. Fezziwig? There is certainly enough room in there to dance a reel or two.

Natural light pours in from huge windows on either end of the long second floor, and from a giant skylight overhead. The whole building is one solid block of wood, the fir planks aged into different shades that create random stripes along the walls.

I encouraged the students to look for oblique points of view and dramatic scale shifts when they chose their compositions. It’s not very often one gets to draw so much empty space, with no distracting trees or furniture.

The highlight for many of these theatrical types was the creepy basement, where “low clearance” signs in a passageway were a bit of an understatement. We stayed for just one drawing down there in the mustiness, in an Escheresque forest of lumber racks.

Big thanks to Urban Visions for making this possible!