A Certain Slant of Light

2023 through 2025 - Construction of the remaining 15 stations is being coordinated with the Columbia Pike Multimodal project.

Columbia Pike features twenty-three new transit stations that will make transit along the Pike easier, safer, more attractive, and accessible. The Columbia Pike Transit Stations are a major feature of the County’s planned premium transit network connecting Columbia Pike, Pentagon City, and Crystal City.

As part of this project, artist Spencer Finch was selected to develop a site-specific design that enhances the canopies of these new transit stations. Entitled A Certain Slant of Light, the design features colorful overlapping leaf patterns and provides shade and protection from the elements. Taken as a group, their shifts of palette and scale provide visual variety as well as wayfinding clues drawn from color memories of Columbia Pike collected from community members. The progression of colors mimics the natural shift of hue from winter to spring to summer to autumn and back to winter, so the journey up and down the Pike is also a trip through the seasons. The leaf designs themselves are intended to serve a meditative purpose, inviting viewers to gaze up at the canopy and get lost in their thoughts.

Spencer Finch is best known for ethereal installations that visualize his experience of natural phenomena. His investigations into the nature of light, color, memory, and perception manifest in watercolors, drawings, video, photographs, and public art. Spencer Finch often reuses titles for his projects, as is the case here, and is from the poem entitled A Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson.

Learn more about the Columbia Pike Transit Stations. Photos by Lloyd Wolf.

Learn more about the project on the Engage Arlington page. Learn more about Spencer Finch.