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LEADING LIGHTS, Catherine Widgery, 2017
SERVICES PROVIDED: Design coordination, Budget management, Engineering coordination and oversight, Fabricator bid process, Fabrication oversight, Lighting Design development, Shipping, Installation services, Scheduling, Project close-out.
LEADING LIGHTS transforms a stretch of road in the Golden Triangle area of Washington DC with a colonnade where each of the 34 columns has three panels of dichroic glass, creating a triangular lantern mounted on steel poles. The dichroic glass surfaces reflect their surroundings through a veil of color. The colors are in a constant state of movement as they shift depending on the angle of the sun and the position of the viewer. The columns are exquisite jewels of luminous, transparent color, never the same.
When direct sunlight strikes the glass surface, brilliant colored bands are projected onto the ground and nearby surfaces, so the artwork engages a much broader area than its physical boundaries. From some angles, in certain lights, they almost disappear before our position or the light shifts and they reemerge as beacons: a gateway. It is this ghostly, ‘there-not-there’ quality that speaks of the sophistication and elegance of the Golden Triangle area of Washington DC, where they are installed.
As cars emerge from the underpass below these columns embrace them as they rise through the gateway. Visible from all of the surrounding buildings and all viewpoints, they create a cohesive place in what before was an ill-defined, nonplace. Each column is fixed at a rotation that is slightly different so different facets of the triangle are exposed in a slightly different way to the angles of light.
At night these columns become delicately colored lanterns as solar-powered lights illuminate from within. The Golden Triangle symbol expresses the open possibilities of this dynamic area and artist Catherine Widgery’s design takes this contemporary vision and applies it to the columns which introduce color, light, and animation to this site. The visual language of the Golden Triangle District, as well as the greater DC area, is one of grand boulevards with rhythmically repeated verticals, whether lines of trees along streets or architectural columns on facades of buildings, inspired this concept for LEADING LIGHTS as we are re-imagining that traditional vocabulary in contemporary materials and form.
Select text and renderings courtesy of Catherine Widgery. Images courtesy of Eve Chayes Lyman and John Grant.
