THEWASHINGTONPOST.
FRIDAY,JULY31, 2020EZ12
On Exhibit
LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POSTground, as they do every year on
this date. This year, they will draw
a crowd uniquely attuned to the
vision of Nancy Holt, the land
artist who designed the park,
installed in 1984. Holt, who died
in 2014, once said that the align-
ment, which commemorates the
day on which William Henry Ross
purchased the land that would
become Rosslyn, integrates “his-
torical time” with “cyclical, uni-
versal time.” But for Holt, this was
merely a steppingstone to a more
elusive kind of time: one that,
were she alive, she might recog-nize in these days of lockdown.
“I’m concerned with that kind
of natural time, or cyclical time,
because it’s closer to what I’m
really interested in, which is no
time,” she explained in a 1993
interview. “The time of the sun —
natural time — it’s closer to that
kind of timeless state. It’s not
clock time. It’s not our busy,
worldly time.”
Holt’s quest for timelessness is
even more apparent in “Sun Tun-
nels,” structures in Utah’s Great
Basin Desert, 40 miles from the
nearest town. Dark Star Park, byBY KELSEY ABLESA
traffic island in Rosslyn,
near the off-ramp from
Route 50, is an unlikely
place to contemplate
matters of cosmic significance.
But during the pandemic, fate
lingers on every doorknob, mor-
tality hangs in the six feet be-
tween restaurant tables and eter-
nity squeezes into elevators. With
time expanding and space con-
stricting, oddly deep thoughts
surface in banal spaces.
On Saturday at 9:32 a.m., the
shadows in Rosslyn’s Dark Star
Park — cast by concrete spheres
and metal poles — will align with
tracks that have been laid on thecontrast, wraps around a monot-
onous office building housing a
personal injury law firm and HR
staffing company. It bends to the
curves of the nearby highway.
Even on a Saturday morning dur-
ing the pandemic, the stream of
cars rushing by is unrelenting.
On roads and in hallways and
cubicles around the park, time is
broken up and optimized: per-
sonal time, commute time, office
time. At its most corporate and
utilitarian, the park provides a
convenient spot to spend a work
lunch hour.
These days, though, Holt’s
park, with its orbs resembling
celestial bodies, its dark pools of
SEE DARK STAR ON 13In Rosslyn, it’s truly a matter of time
On one day a year, the shadows at Dark Star Park
align with the tracks as a meditation on momentsIf you go
DARK STAR PARK
1655 Fort Myer Dr., Arlington.
parks.arlingtonva.us/dark-star-park.
Dates: O n permanent view. The
shadows of the park’s structures
align with ground marking every
year on Aug. 1 at 9:32 a.m.
Admission: Free.People wait for shadows to
appear at Dark Star Park's large
spheres in 2015. On Saturday at
9:32 a.m., the shadows from
Nancy Holt’s sculptures align
with t he tracks on the ground to
integrate “historical time” with
“cyclical, universal time.”