Client: Veterans Administration
Location: Palo Alto, CA, United States
Completion date: 2015
Project Team
Artist
Ray King
Ray King Studio
Team Member
Vladislav Vershinin
Ray King Studio
Client
Veterans Administration
United States Government
Overview
Horizon, 2015, Veterans Administration Facility, Palo Alto, CA
Commissioned by the Veterans Administration
20’ x 120’ x .5’, Holographic Glass, Stainless Steel
Quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt are translated into Morse Code using holographic glass to animate the façade of parking facility.
Goals
In the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, artist Ray King pays tribute to the original digital code (Morse code), war veterans and president Abraham Lincoln.
“Horizon” animates the veterans administration hospital parking facility in Palo Alto, with interactive holographic glass elements that respond to sunlight with brilliant colors that spell out – in code – quotes by president Abraham Lincoln and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
A series of laminated holographic glass circles and rectangles welcome visitors to the VA Hospital with coded messages that relate to the mission of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
As a public art project, Ray King translated inspirational quotes from Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt into Morse code and, using laminated holographic glass elements as dots and dashes, attached the quotes onto the southern and western façades of the 600 car parking garage.
Process
On the southern facade: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as god gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
-Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, 1865
On the western facade: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt’s “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life,” 1960
Additional Information
The VA’s mission to heal the bodies and spirits of the men and women who have experienced the trauma of war, presented an opportunity for artist ray king to use light and color to create a welcoming work of art that inspires a unique uplifting experience and creates a healing therapeutic atmosphere for the patients and staff. King designs artwork that serves as a visual metaphor that life is a journey of enlightenment.