Between 2019 and 2020, Kelly Gregory and Mary Welcome became the first artists in residence with Washington Department of Transportation. This Book Is a Bridge is one of the artifacts produced during the residency. A combination of data, documentation, poetry, prose, and photography, it is an essential for the public-curious person who is in love or at odds with the public infrastructure in their community.

From the authors:

This piece chronicled our journey, set the stage for future creative dialogue and presented a number of projects that address common themes along the way. This is both research and project. It blurs the line and becomes a bridge. We consider it a social sculpture and also a 270 page full color publication. It is a report about people and their places, the very human effort it takes to hold the transportation network together. We presented it to the agency it as a scenic byway.

From the book:

This document is a moment in time and a mileage marker. It’s the roadmap to WSDOT’s pilot residency program, the first in the nation, a big bold beautiful experiment within a complex government agency. It’s authored by the artists and inspired by all the people that took time to sit and teach us the way their world moves. This report is about people and their places, the very human effort it takes to hold the transportation network together. We’ve tried to keep the line loose and languid, a scenic byway, an afternoon deep in the weeds of the way it all works.

The goal of this book is multi-dimensional. Flip it over and read it out loud backwards. Prop it up and get political. Close your eyes and pick a page and learn about a thing you never knew to see before. It’s for future artists-in-residence, it’s for the WSDOT family we’ve begun to know, it’s for civic organizations interested in embedding artists, and it’s for anyone looking to take a long journey by way of rail, waterway, sky, road, highway, bikelane, bus, and imagination.

As the first ever program like this in a statewide DOT, we hope it’s a helpful step towards future collaboration and new ways of thinking about transportation and arts. We think the program can be a national model that inspires innovation and change across the country, starting here in the Evergreen State. This document chronicles our journey, sets the stage for future creative dialogue, and presents a number of projects that address common themes that emerged along the way.