If you have a bag of loose change at your house and have been wondering what to do with it, the arts might be the answer you’ve been looking for. A new public art project from Donald Lipski will be installed near Columbia Pike and South Jefferson Street in Arlington, adorned with coins donated by local residents and meant to honor Columbia Pike’s history as a toll road.
Lipski, who was brought on to work on the piece as part of Arlington County’s Multimodal Street Improvement project in 2013, crafted a 50-foot sculpture from a wind-turbine wing and will place it where Arlington and Fairfax County meet, reminiscent of an upright tollgate.
Congress charted Columbia Pike as a toll road to connect outlying areas to Washington, D.C. in 1810. The coins are an effort to recognize not only that, but also the diversity of the community as Lipski welcomes coins from wherever people hail from or have visited.
“People might be likely, in a drawer or on a shelf in a jar, to have coins from their homeland,” says Lipski. “I thought it would be a great, easy way for people to be involved in the piece.”
Coins can be dropped off during normal business hours from June 19-Sept. 5 at the following locations: Arlington Mill Community Center, 909 S. Dinwiddie St., Arlington; Columbia Pike Branch Library, 816 S. Walter Reed Drive, Arlington; and Ellen M. Bozman Government Center Lobby, 2100 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington.
Lipski’s work is expected to be erected either in the fall of 2018 or spring of 2019.
