Today, we de-compressed from our Mariner ticket party and headed down to the Bemis building to check out their Spring Art Show. I've read about their art shows before and always wanted to see it. We have a special bond to the Bemis building because, as you might remember, we stayed in one of the artist lofts as a vacation rental in 2014. We were eager to return and see it again and especially if Mr. Mouser was still there, the neighbor's extrovert resident cat. We only saw an artist rendition of him, however.
We found out that he is still around, though, because we talked to the artist that we rented our loft from who is also still there. His name is Alex Lim and he had his studio open to view.
He told us the building no longer allows the residents to rent their studios after someone had a bad experience. We told him we were happy we had the experience when we did because we loved his place. He especially liked our story that we are actually living in Seattle now and that we had contacted our real estate agent for the first time when we were staying in his loft. We went to several Mariner games that week because the Bemis building is right across the street from Safeco Field. It is such a unique building and we just love it. It was built in 1904-1906 for the Bemis Bag Company in the former Seattle tidelands.
The Bemis Company was founded in St. Louis Missouri by Judson Moss Bemis in 1858. They opened their first branch factory in Minneapolis in 1881 and then expanded to include nine additional factories across the United States by 1906.The Seattle plant originally manufactured textile and open mesh bags, especially for flour products, which were milled from Eastern Washington wheat by Seattle mills. In 1942, the factory became a major supplier of small paper bags.
The Bemis Company, which continues in business with corporate offices in Wisconsin, sold the property in 1995. The building was then converted for use as live/work apartment/studios for artists and office units. Here's an artist's version:
Alex Lim's loft is on the fourth floor where we stayed so we went there first. The third and fourth floors had art in the hallways, plus individual lofts were open to the public for viewing, like Alex's loft.
I loved peeking inside all the opened lofts to see how the artists live. Most had identical layouts like Alex's but with all the individual art, they all had such different feels to them. One of our favorite's was across the hall (we were looking for Mr Mouser) and full of blown glass. Just beautiful.
There are over 45 artist lofts in the Bemis building spread over four floors. The hallways are 10 feet wide and all the ceilings are 18 feet high so very spacious. Another one of our favorites was a loft full of collectibles and antiques. It reminded me of the Ye Old Curiosity Shop.
Anybody want to swing?
How do you like this Dick's cheeseburger wrapper with cows on it?
There were lots of things for sale, of course. Here are more interesting art items as we wandered the building and lofts:
Here are a couple of paintings with Seattle police uniforms covering them but you could open them up by swinging the uniforms out and the painting were complete nudes underneath. And I mean completely nude. We just cracked up, I'm sorry...
This artist loft had antique bikes, chairs and racing shells/canoes hanging from the ceiling.
There were Bemis building artifacts spread throughout the building keeping with the historical aspect of the place.
A full day schedule of musicians was also part of the art show who played in the hallways.
The second floor were smaller studios with just enough space for artists to work and display their art. We walked into one studio during a photo shoot that was fun to watch.
We would definitely go again to the Bemis Art Show. We love the building and the feel of all the history inside, we love the neighborhood right across from Safeco Field and we love all the different artist who live there. And next time, maybe we'll be lucky enough to run into Mr. Mouser.
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