Woodpile is a playful response to the steep slope of Boren Avenue between John Street and Thomas Street: a large pile-up of stainless steel cylinders comes to rest against a makeshift prop, exposing the potential energy of this piece of topography. Stacked like cordwood on one side of the entrance stairs, this exaggerated backyard form has been moved to a place of prominence at the front door, transposing an everyday object for the more formal symbolic marker that might be more commonly placed at the entrance of a building. Heishman uses references to the history of Seattle in the three public works she has built in her adopted hometown. For this latest piece, in addition to celebrating a colloquial sculptural form, she imagines a pile-up of logs, rolling rather than skidding down Boren on their way to the sawmills along the south end of the lake. The cylinders are capped stainless steel pipes whose welding joints are left raw to reveal the process of their construction and capitalize on the rainbow colors formed during the heating and cooling of the metal. A shockingly blue piece of bronze fabric is draped over the prop, reminiscent of a worker’s raincoat or, perhaps, a blue plastic tarp that is a feature of many a backyard woodpile.