By DOTTY DECOSTER

Two themes in the North District Neighborhoods Plan are beautifully captured in one of Lake City's public art pieces. A focus on natural systems and their importance in our lives and a desire to make a more beautiful place of the Lake City area come together in the Lake City Library gates. As we begin to look forward to expanding the Lake City Library and creating a better civic core area in Lake City, these beautiful gates offer inspiration.

Maybe you haven't noticed the gates? They're usually open when the Library is open. Maybe you haven't heard of George Tsutakawa, Seattle's internationally renowned artist, sculptor and professor at the University of Washington for 30 years? Mr. Tsutakawa has left Seattle a wonderful heritage of fountains, sculptures and two sets of sculpted gates. Lake City has one set, the other is at the Madison St. entrance to the Arboretum.

The Lake City Library gates are bronze and were built in the period of the artist's life when he focused on fountains and large public pieces. The fountains came first. The "Fountain of Wisdom" Tsutakawa created for the Seattle Public Library downtown in 1960 was the first public sculpture commissioned in Seattle since 1908.

In a sense, Seattle rediscovered public art with George Tsutakawa.

The Lake City Library gates were built in 1967. By then Seattleites were beginning to think of the elements of natural systems as an integral part of the built environment.

Mr. Tsutakawa spoke about his fountains as "an attempt to unify water - the life force of the universe that flows in an elusive cyclical course throughout eternity - with an immutable metal sculpture. He spoke of symmetry."

I think, to me, it's the hardest thing to do to make something symmetrical and beautiful at the same time.

And of public art, Tsutakawa said: "Outdoor and public sculpture ... for the public ... for the people. And I think it's very important that you design something which is appropriate to the scale, and to the environment, and to the wishes of the people." (Quoted in "George Tsutakawa"by Martha Kingsbury, U.W. Press, 1990). These ideas seem to be captured in bronze, don't you think?

Mr. Tsutakawa, born in 1910, was a native of Seattle and divided his time as a child between his family here and in Japan. He graduated from Broadway High School, the University of Washington, and taught at the U.W. in both the schools of Architecture and Art.

His work was in many media and ranged through a number of "schools" before focusing on the work for which he is best known here, his fountains and sculptures. The Seattle Art Museum features some examples of the range of George Tsutakawa's work in its downtown location.

Most of my adult life has been inspired by George Tsutakawa's work, and I think Lake City is very lucky to have those beautiful gates!