R Street SE is for Rusty, please! Photo via National Zoo

Lovers of animals and whimsy, brace yourself: The Capitol Hill Alphabet Animal Art Project will provide the city with ten animal sculptures that will live on street signs in Southeast D.C.

The project, a partnership between the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop and the D.C. Department of Transportation, is looking for ten artists to make ten animal sculptures. The artists will be given $1,000 and a $200 materials fee. Not convinced this is the best public art project ever? Check this out.

This pilot project will use animals as the binding theme, each sculpture to be an animal starting with the same letter as the street where the sculpture will be installed.

Then there’s this.

Sculptures can be figurative and somewhat factual, or conceptual and somewhat fantastical.

And finally.

The project will also instill each sculpture with a digital “aura” which will connect walkers via cellphone to information about the artist and the neighborhood.

Artists will even be able to work with a historian “for insight into the historical and contemporary significance of the specific locations.”

The project’s request for qualifications is due on December 15, so there’s very little time for artists to get in on this amazing effort. Artists will be notified of their selection in January and the deadline for their final designs is February. Sculptures will be finished and installed in April.