Artwork copyright Paul Buckner. Photo courtesy of South Seattle College, 2020.

Artwork copyright Paul Buckner. Photo courtesy of South Seattle College, 2020.

Duwamish Working Hands, 2005

Paul Buckner
American (born 1933, died 2014)

Location: South Seattle College - Georgetown Campus, Seattle

About the Artwork

Duwamish Working Hands is a sculpture by Paul Buckner, located at South Seattle College's Georgetown Campus. The selection committee for the Duwamish Apprenticeship Education Center wanted a sculpture commemorating their graduates who are heading into the working trades. 

Buckner's sculpture honors the ways that the students will strengthen their communities. He creatively used the sculpture's tall, narrow shape to show three craftspeople on each side. The men and women are working with their hands, in different types of spaces. He describes how we can see, from bottom to top on the sculpture, “floors by cement finishers and floor-tile setters, walls by brick masons and painters, and overhead I chose a window glazier and a lineman.” Buckner framed the artwork with 72 unique handmade tiles, inspired by the hand symbol he had seen in Northwest Native American art. 

Buckner modeled the six workers in individual plaster sections, three for each side. Rubber molds of these sections were made by his sculptor son, Matthew Buckner. The Apprenticeship Education Center’s faculty at South Seattle College's Georgetown Campus then cast the pillar on-site in limestone-colored cement. 

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with South Seattle College.

About the Artist

Paul Buckner (1933-2014) is remembered for his work in stone, metal, and wood. He said this about his work, “I have trained my whole life to be able to reach back to the forgotten things we are born knowing. Whether I will, in any measure, ever succeed, I don’t know. I do know that in making things I take great joy.”
Buckner was born and raised in the Ballard and West Seattle neighborhoods of Seattle. He was an influential and well-loved professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene from 1962 to 1995. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1959. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate School in California in 1961. He also served in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Korean War (1950-53).