Dressed Up and Pinned swoops across the facade of the Hyatt Place Hotel in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia.  This bold, sleek sculpture takes the shape of a surreal stiletto shoe morphing into drapery as it wraps around the building’s corner. 

When the Schupp Companies redeveloped this site for a new hotel and agreed to provide public art as a public benefit, they hired Via to advise on artist selection and oversee the development of the public art project. We identified the New England-based artist and furniture designer Vivian Beer to create this dramatic and compelling sculptural work that also functions as a bench and we navigated the project through the County’s requirements for reviewing and approving the artist selection, concept design, and installation. 

Inspired by the history and culture of cars, fashion and the golden age of flight, the sculpture was conceived during the artist’s time as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum where she researched the design history of aeronautics and aerodynamics. She was especially influenced by streamline design of the 1930s, Art Deco and the modern machine age aesthetic in industrial design.