Artist’s rendering by Alex Cooper/Courtesy Golden Triangle BID
The nether-region between Farragut Square and Dupont Circle might be one of the less artistically inspiring parts of town, but that could change in a few months. Come late November, drivers and pedestrians along a four-block stretch of Connecticut Avenue NW will find themselves bathed in color and light.
The D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities and the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District announced today that Alex Cooper, a lighting designer at the National Portrait Gallery, will install an LED sculpture on the landscaped medians of Connecticut Avenue between K Street and Jefferson Place.
Cooper’s installation will be a permanent addition to the neighborhood, which will see the creation of what he calls a “graceful dance of light and color.” The LED apparatuses will be entangled with the trees and flowerbeds that divide the avenue.
“There’s a rhythm of plants and trees,” Cooper, 36, says in a phone interview. “It’s not quick or flashy. It’s very much a treatment. It’s not a physical sculpture.”
By day, Cooper says his installation won’t look like much. It’s more a creature of the night, when the LED devices will glow in a rich palette of colors to reflect the surrounding environs. While one might think that the crowded section between Farragut and Dupont means a lot of dull brick and gray asphalt, Cooper says the color scheme is far more dynamic. Expect a lot of secondary cyans and magentas that bounce off storefronts and shopping windows.
“You’re responding to what the natural colors are in the landscape, but also what feels right in the city,” he says. “It’s not as neutral as you think it is.”
Cooper’s day job is to illuminate the exhibits at the National Portrait Gallery; he previously did the same thing at the National Museum of the American Indian. The University of Maryland graduate has dabbled in freelance work, including others’ public art installations, but the Connecticut Avenue project will be his first solo outing. Earlier this year, he was involved in the installation of Michael Enn Sivert’s “Farragut Spheres,” a pattern of convex, luminescent sconces mounted outside Metrorail’s Farragut West station.
Sivert’s installation required custom-made LED devices; Cooper says the lighting units for his piece are more routine, but his design is no less intricate. As a permanent fixture, it might be adapted to reflect not only its surroundings, but also the season. With a targeted debut of late November, Cooper expects to spend the middle part of that month “freezing while programming it at night.”
