Completed Projects

​​​​​Chandra Cox

Raleigh, NC

Locomotion

Kinetic finials, Orb sculpture, laminated windscreen glass, passenger shelter columns​

2018

Chandra Cox was impressed with the volume of train traffic at the transportation crossroads where the Sugar Creek station is located.  The trains range from passenger to freight, and she acknowledges this through Locomotion for the light rail station by utilizing symbols and imagery from rail history.

Entering the station from the parking garage riders encounter Chandra Cox's 18' sculpture The Orb, a symbol derived from a train directional signal.  A collaboration with her architect and fabricator, The Orb is made of painted steel with laser cut patterns arranged in a radial format, and is lit by a ring of LED fixtures. ​

Cox takes a unique approach with words and letters in her metal cladding designs for the canopy columns.  Laser cut into the metal are several historic spellings of the name Sugar Creek, including sugaree, sugaw and shuger.  She chose to use these different spellings because they demonstrate the vernacular history dating back to Colonial America.

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Riders will see finials topping the station canopies spinning in the breeze.  They are an assortment of colorful railroad signals from various states and other countries, typically used in combination to give instruction: stop, caution, proceed, slow, clear, etc.  However, Cox's combined choices provide no specific instruction but merely reference a broader railway vocabulary.

The glass windscreens under the canopies are filled with text containing the names of all Class I Railroads in the country overlaid on larger images of trains that appear from a distance.  The designs are an interplay of art and technology, as the artist worked with a computer programmer, Michael Bissinger, who created an algorithm where the text reacts to the tones in her photographs.  ​

Artist Bio​

Chandra Cox is head of the department of art and design at NC State University. In addition to her exhibition and teaching credentials, Cox has received several public art commissions over the past decade. In Charlotte, her most notable projects are the Beatties Ford Road​ Metro Police Facility and CATS Rosa Parks Transit Center. Chandra earned her MFA from Ohio State University in Columbus and a BA from Hampton Institute in Hampton, VA. Cox’s architect and collaborator on this project is Susan Cole Cannon, also of Raleigh, NC.