Bennett Park Art Atrium

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1601 Clarendon Blvd
Arlington, VA 22209

  Parks • Public Art

Bennett Park Atrium is a public art gallery free and open to the public.  The gallery is included as a community benefit in the Clarendon Boulevard Tower. The space is accessible from Pierce Street and connects to a public courtyard between the buildings. The Gallery and the courtyard house three pieces of public art by regional artists Kendall Buster, Wendy Ross and Foon Sham which were provided by the developer, Washington Real Estate Investment Trust (WRIT), in coordination with Arlington Public Art.
 
Kendall Buster, Untitled
This suspended sculpture consists of an intricate metal framework over which greenhouse shade cloth has been stretched. The resulting forms flow between the courtyard columns and resemble low-lying, billowing clouds. The semi-transparent membrane covering the sculpture is reminiscent of skin stretched over a skeletal form. Shade cloth is typically used to protect delicate plants from intense heat and sun, filtering light and harmful UV rays.

Foon Sham, Aya
Foon Sham’s 15 foot tall sculpture twists upward to resemble a faceted tower inspired in part by Sham’s exposure to Southwestern architecture. By stacking and interlocking segments of cherry, walnut, and maple, Sham creates an intricate, three-dimensional composite sculpture. While joinery began as a practical construction element, in the late ’90s Sham began enjoying the joinery’s compositional and aesthetic possibilities.

Wendy Ross, Radiolaria
This open-armature sculpture by Wendy Ross is part of a series inspired by tiny marine protozoa called radiolaria. These minute marine protozoa possess filament-like pseudopodia, or protrusions that assist in locomotion, flotation, and gathering food. The symmetrical structure endures beyond the organism’s demise as an intricate and delicate skeleton with a central capsule-like form. Here, Ross has deposited a skeletal form, reminiscent of radiolaria. Radiating discs give Radiolaria the appearance of mobility, as though a gust of wind could propel the form off of its base.

 

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