HADDAD | DRUGAN

Yakima Illuminations: Bins of Light is an integrated public art feature encompassing the future underpasses on Lincoln Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in downtown Yakima, which will pass under BNSF railroad tracks and Front Street. 

The art draws from the historic district’s past and present role as the locus of fruit storage, packaging, and transport.  The art uses the iconic form of the fruit bin and crate label graphics.  Using color activated by both the sun and night illumination, the art will be dynamic and engaging at all times of day for both drivers and those walking in the historic district. 

Each portal consists of a stack of fruit bins, abstracted into light boxes. The "bins of light" mimic the size and shape of the fruit bins that characterize Front Street and the railroad tracks.  The outer faces are translucent glass, laminated with film in colors of the fruit grown in the Yakima Valley.  Some include photo depictions of actual fruit on the laminated film.  The inner faces of the light boxes (to be viewed from Front Street) consist of anodized aluminum plate laser-cut with images and typography from Yakima’s historic fruit crate labels.

Light activates the art in a variety of interesting ways.  The portals face east and west, so are back-lit and front-lit by low sunlight, either in the morning or evening depending on orientation.  During the day, on the glass side the boxes glow with the film color; and on the metal side the cut-out image is backed by glowing translucent color.  When the metal side is front-lit, the sun casts onto the glass a reverse-image of the metal cut-out.  This image will “move” across the glass over the course of the day. 

When trains come through town an electronic eye will trigger a change in the light boxes' internal lights.  The lights will turn off, then come on through 4-5 phases in which the bottom boxes are lit, then the mid-level boxes, then the top boxes, referencing the “stacking” of fruit bins.