In no way do I intend this post as a slam on Stranger art critic Jen Graves, who is well within the mainstream of online reporting and besides makes a substantial contribution to the city's visual art coverage.

Every newspaper that's trying at all is going for instant news: Post what you have and add to it as the day goes along.

While that approach is essential in breaking news -- art stolen, art donated, curators on the run, resignations in disgrace -- it may not do justice to more complicated narratives. Throwing online whatever you've got is premised on the idea that reporters are digging deeper and will get back to you asap from the well of their deepness, bringing it all back home and tying it together.

Instead, after repeated Slog posts of the subject of a SuttonBeresCuller art gas station vs. Georgetown artists, we get a clarification today, here.

Louie Mass, rock front in Georgetown, photo from Ronald Aeberhard

Yesterday, I got the same e-mails as Graves did from a Georgetown artist, Ronald Aeberhard. Because I couldn't reach SuttonBeresCuller, I waited to log in. And talking to Aeberhard, he sounded a lot less upset in person that he did in his e-mails. (Sample sentence: "Save the rocks!") He said he was hoping to start a discussion and was startled to see his conversation starter posted in full on Slog. (Note to Aeberhard: Don't send to the press what you don't want to see writ large there unless you surround it with cautions.)

I hung back and posted nothing. I know that's old school, but I noticed Graves tried to insert a little healthy doubt about the meaning of it all by putting a question mark in her headline: "Georgetown Artists Mad at SuttonBeresCuller?" Jon Stewart ruined this kind of question mark for me, here.

After talking with John Sutton today, here's my first stab at a version. The artist team got a lease on a vacant gas station in Georgetown, 6525 Ellis Ave. S. For the past three years, nobody's done anything with it. SuttonBeresCuller want to restore the orginal gas station but turn it into an art park, a gasless, green gas station. (Preliminary look at plans for their Mini-Mart City Park here.) if all goes well, their park might be bought by the city and turned into something permanent.

Cool idea. In the 1950s, however, after its life as a gas station, a craftsman named Louie Mass gave it a rock wall for a front entrance. Plenty of businesses have been in there since, but the property is currently overgrown and abandoned.

If Mass' rock wall was so precious to the community, why didn't anybody step in to save it before now? On the other hand, didn't Mass, an artist, do 50 years ago what SBC are trying to do now, transform an old gas station into a thing of beauty?

Mass' work is nice, not great like the Walker Rock Garden in West Seattle (detail here) or Charles Greening's rock archway at Meridian Park in Wallingford (detail here), and not in the same universe as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in L.A. (detail here), but well done. Mass also built a house in Georgetown whose front is rocks. It's well maintained and looks it.

SuttonBeresCuller talked repeatedly to the neighborhood council, which so far doesn't oppose them. Besides, SBC isn't going to eliminate Mass from the site. Plans call for his work to be moved inside, with a version of his original waterfall.

In other words, never mind. The artists will be back in Seattle in August, and I'm going to do a story about their art park plans then. No doubt, so will Graves, who is sure to do her usual fine job.

Update: Aeberhard provided the original spelling of the stone artist's name. On Wednesday night, he called to say it's Mass, not Moss. Story now corrected.