 Jason Sprinkle was born Nov. 6, 1969, in Fullerton, Calif., and raised in Seattle, where he attended school until he was 16, he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, joined the Job Corps, where he learned welding and earned his GED. He was the artist who paralyzed downtown Seattle in 1996 when an art event he initiated turned into a rush-hour bomb scare. Jason Sprinkle died May 16 in Long Beach, Miss., where he had been visiting his aunt and looking for work. Jason Sprinkle was hit by a freight train. There were no witnesses, and it is not certain how or why he was struck.
I moved to Seattle on the day that Jason Sprinkle placed his sculpture/truck in Westlake Plaza. It was July 12, 1996 and I had come from a sleepy southern town, Sewanee, in Tennessee. I was met at the air port by my friend Rebecca and we drove to her Capitol Hill apartment. Being new to the area, I had no expectations has to how long of a journey it was from the airport to the hill. After dropping my bags, we went to another friend's apartment. Brian had the television on and out on the lanai I could see the helicopters hovering over the city center. I walked into the living room to find out what was going on. I saw a sculpture, through the lens of a TV news chopper. The talking heads were describing a "possible bomb" and "serious consequences" and I turned to my friend Brian and said "they think that work of art is a bomb?". This incident served as my introduction to the Seattle Art Scene.
It was with great sadness that I read Shelia Farr's obituary today of Jason Sprinkle in the Seattle Times. He was a young, fearless questioner of what we often take for granted. This very [and last] "art intervention" left him broken, frightened and not long for this world. I have always believed that artists are to culture what the canary is to the miner. A warning system. They try to warn us, or at least make us see what is around us... what we take for granted. Sprinkle touched our collective fear about terrorism years before 9/11. All of these thought will take me years to process.
I never met Jason Sprinkle, nor do I know anyone who worked with him. I do not presume to know how or why is mind worked. All I do know is that after that July event and the time he served in the county jail, he was never in our face again. Sure there were faults with the Westlake piece and the uproar it caused, a chain reaction of events which he could not contain. My question is Did we really need to break his spirit so brutally?. In the aftermath of this news, I wonder how hurt, scared and frightened he was. Now he is gone and all that remains is an obit in the Seattle Times. I wish we could come up with a better epitaph.
Rest in Peace Jason Sprinkle
A memorial service is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday, June 4, at Calvary Fellowship, 23302 56th Ave. W., Mountlake Terrace. Donations may be made in Jason Sprinkle's name to the National Association of Mental Illness (South King County), 515 W. Harrison St., Suite 215, Kent, WA 98032.
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