Chinatown DC Barnes Dance Artwork

The Charles Bergen Studios Team--Charles Bergen, Brandon Bailey and American Striping were just selected by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to create the Chinatown DC Barnes Dance Artwork.

The Chinatown Barnes Dance Public Art Project is a new public art work designed to enhance the crosswalk at 7th and H Streets NW. This is a permanent two-dimensional artwork to be applied with paint to the high-visibility crosswalk.

Each year in Washington, DC’s Chinatown Chinese New Year is celebrated for fifteen days with a parade, the Dragon Dance, musical and dance performances, special food and numerous other cultural rituals and traditions. In this design for the crosswalk artwork the Dragon Dance used to celebrate and usher in the New Lunar Year gets top billing in the diagonal crosswalks of 7th and H St NW, Washington, DC. The long curves, colorful scales and expressive heads of the dragon lead the pedestrians from one corner across to the other. The twelve lunar zodiac symbols are placed in the gaps between the crosswalk bands. Here in the perpendicular crosswalks they forever reenact the race across the wild river that determined their sequence in the lunar calendar and allowed them to become zodiac signs for ever.

See more on the project here by downloading the project sheet here.