Public Art Will Return to Lake Thoreau Spillway in June

South Lakes High School art students are working on a follow up to last year’s popular public art installation that brought a multicolored pyramid to the Lake Thoreau spillway.

This year, the “STEAM Team,” as South Lakes art teacher Marco Rando calls the SLHS public art club that is combining science, technology, engineering, art and math into the project, is designing an iridescent double-helix sculpture.

“The double-helix is to represent the idea that we are all made from DNA and are from the same components,” the artists say in their mission statement. “In contrast, the iridescence represents the different shades through which people see themselves.”

“As Wislawa Szymborska states in her poem Nothing Twice, ‘although we’re different (we concur)/ just as two drops of water are.’ However, from the distance we are one united shimmering color. The sculpture will act as a prism to illuminate the shades through which we see ourselves.”

The group’s project was approved by the Reston Association Design Review Board last week. Rando said the project should be installed in June.

Members of the STEAM Team include  Margaret Lashley, Josh Rodriguez, Kathleen Roherty, Tehmeena Salahin,Lucy Nguyen, Carson Bush, Victoria Slaski, Leah Moyer, Samantha Malzahn, Cale Sherman, Johnathan Doctor, Ryan Monaco and Ben Paul.

In 2014, SLHS students brought the first public art to the spillway. The Pyramid of Light remained Lake Thoreau throughout the summer and received many kudos from the community.

Photos: Top — Model of 2015 double helix project/Courtesy Marco Rando; Bottom — Pyramid of Light 2014/file photo