I just got a press release promoting three new public art installations going in at the MarketFront at Pike Place Market, which is set to be completed in January 2017. The public art involves mosaics, pigs, and colored aluminum strips, and sounds just fine.

Clicking through to the full PDF of what's going in at the MarketFront, I found something nobody was promoting, but that will be far more meaningful to Seattle art than a few murals.

The plan calls for seven live-work units for low-income senior artists at the new Alex Jackson House at the Market, which will also include 33 more units of housing for low-income seniors.

Jackson died in January after a full life as a Tlingit carver who learned at the foot of his grandfather. He practiced what he'd learned at boarding school, according to his obituary, presumably a boarding school that tried to drum his culture out of him.

In the aftermath of the shooting of fellow carver John T. Williams, Jackson spoke out, saying that he, too, had been beaten by Seattle police repeatedly.

Jackson sold his carvings at the Market, where he walked every day, the naming committee noted. He kept on walking even after he went blind. Determined to adapt, he just counted his steps.