Where the bridge draws back
Design alum Vivian Cho spent the last few months of 2025 as the Artist in Residence at the University Bridge.
On March 28, when the Judkins Park Sound Transit station opens, light rail riders won’t be the only figures on the platform. Several well-known Seattleites including playwright August Wilson and his close friend Charles Johnson, an author and UW professor emeritus of English, linger there in the artwork.
“A Walk in the Neighborhood,” a public art installation by Barbara Earl Thomas, ’73, ’77, is the culmination of 12 years of creative development. It features illustrated glass panels that serve as dividers and windbreaks on the terminal platform. The imagery features people and elements from the neighborhood rendered in Thomas’s cut-paper style.
Detailed views of ‘A walk in the neighborhood,’ a new public art commission installed at the Judkins Park light rail station.
Working with fabricators and cutting-edge technology, Thomas translated her hand-cut silhouettes into metal and glass, highlighting images that stood out to her along her many walks in the Rainier Valley neighborhood. Drawing inspiration from urban farms spilling down the hill along Martin Luther King Boulevard, wildlife and views along Lake Washington, she wanted to highlight what a person might experience when they get off the train.
Thomas also depicted three more friends, studio assistant Peggy Allen Jackson, ’90, local artist and community builder Elisheba Wokoma and Chieko Phillips, ’11, a heritage program director for King County. By depicting Wilson and Johnson with books, Thomas wanted to draw a connection between traveling with the body and traveling with the mind. “I hope the images do something to make people’s waits more bearable, because we’re all waiting for something,” Thomas says. “It takes energy to hold that space of waiting. And I just want to soften that.”
The neighborhood has been a touchstone throughout much of Thomas’ life as a Seattleite. From 2005 to 2012, she served as Director of the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) which is a short walk from the light rail stop.
“A Walk in the Neighborhood” isn’t the first public art piece Thomas has made for Sound Transit. In 2008, she completed “Electric Crow,” an installation at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way South and Walden St. The laser-cut stainless-steel screen conceals an electric substation. Her other public art commissions include sculptures at The Evergreen State College, the Multnomah County Court House in Portland, and most recently the Jardin de Seattle in Nantes, France.
“Art in public places can beautify and enhance a transient moment to create an opportunity for a conversation, shared smile, raised eyebrow or head nod among strangers,” Thomas says. “And for however briefly, we can become human to each other.”