Bright Idea

At 1701 Baltimore, a brick building with huge windows continues to undergo rehab work started by the Nicholson Group months ago. The vacant building’s windows are adorned with strips of red, yellow and blue vinyl attached to flashing lights.

The deliberate color scheme is unusual for artist James Woodfill, who prefers to use “off the shelf” materials. But because building owner Brad Nicholson commissioned him to cover up an act of vandalism that did $8,000 worth of damage to the windows, Woodfill had to find custom materials.

“Out of all the solutions that [Nicholson] had available to him, he brought in the notion of a temporary solution and talked to an artist,” Woodfill says. “It’s a nice reminder for builders to keep artists’ cards in their Rolodexes along with the plumbers’ and the electricians’.” The project offered Woodfill the unique opportunity to work with a space that’s not being used, so his power cords crisscross the floor without getting in anyone’s way, and lights flash 24/7 without driving some tenant insane.

Nicholson also commissioned Woodfill to do a more permanent light installation on a building at 17th and Walnut. There, on the building’s west side, three lights attached to motorized pendulums swing from the building’s façade every night when it gets dark. The pendulums aren’t synchronized. “The ebb and flow of lights swinging in tandem and then in opposition was something that grabbed my interest,” Woodfill says.

That ebb and flow also grabs the interest of people walking to their cars in nearby parking lots, who notice only a set of three mysterious moving lights and wonder where they’re coming from.