Today is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a good day to share that I’ve been working with the International Uranium Film Festival (@uraniumfilm) to bring the festival to Seattle in April. There are a lot of moving parts, but it’s looking good so far! More soon.
This partnership came my way in the midst of several months of reading and research on atomic history and nuclear culture, which is also how I found myself at the UW Special Collections Library yesterday looking at Box 13 of the Fred Moody papers. I read Moody’s “Seattle and the Demons of Ambition” because it’s one of the few sources I could find with direct testimony about the life and work of the late artist, James L. Acord, who is something of a legend in the field of “atomic age art.”
Moody’s life intersected with Acord’s most materially when Moody procured Acord’s “Monstrance for a Grey Horse,” a massive granite statue meant to last forever and stand as a warning to future in habitants about nuclear wastelands. That was the original intent, at least.
I want to share a lot more about James Acord in the future, but for now, I just want to lament how little known he seems to be in his own city. There are small traces of him here and there; I’ve sleuthed a contemporary figure who knew him when he was alive but haven’t heard back. His name is in some ephemera deep inside one gallery’s archives. On the whole, he seems better known and remembered in Europe than in Seattle. I’d like to remedy that.
Next month, he would have been 80 years old were he alive today. I’d like to “do” something. Maybe it could happen alongside the Uranium Film Festival. Interested? Get in touch.