Remember when Stranger Genius Award winners Lead Pencil Studio got a grant and were working on an installation in the Ross Dress for Less building downtown? Their installation was going to be upstairs, above the store—but that fell through, because the managers of the store kept changing, and could never really get their heads around how exactly people were going to be traipsing through their space to get to an art installation.

So LPS moved the idea to another place: a 4,500-square-foot retail space at the base of Rainier Tower, where they've been holed up building art for the last three weeks. According to Annie Han (she's one-half of LPS), the installation will transform the currently anonymous space into "three different types of retail, intersecting and crammed into one space, but with no products—empty of goods."

This particular storefront, at 411 Union Street, used to be a fine Italian men's-clothing shop. For six weeks, opening on February 4, it will be LPS's first major project in Seattle since their return from Rome (they also have a show up this winter at Boise Art Museum), and it will be called Retail/Commercial.