About The Color Wall
About the Color Wall and the restoration effort
“Color Wall” is an exuberant symphony in light. Vertical patterns of vibrant color slowly and methodically undulate, everchanging, across a white background divided by slender black metal vanes. The 12′ x 36′ mural overlooks Hillsborough St., projecting from behind a glass wall on the first floor of the D.H. Hill Library book tower. The color and light display, which is intended for viewing at night, is an incredible sight to behold. Created by the late Joe Cox, a Raleigh artist and faculty member in the College of Design (1954-1980), the light sculpture had been commissioned by then Chancellor John T. Caldwell in 1972, and was installed in the newly completed book tower.
A battery of 23 light bulbs casts light through individual colored gels affixed to a housing unit. The bulbs are switched on and off by a sychronized timing system, resulting in patterns of hundreds of vertical bands of multicolored light as the beams of light pass over one another, and shine against dozens of stationary, black metal vanes placed in front of an expanse of white. The pattern of light and color changes 32 times every two minutes — the resulting effect is dazzling.
While its concept was genius, its execution was technically quite simple. The entire display was orchestrated by a mechanical timing system of switches and gears which Cox himself fabricated. However, the mechanical elements of the switching system were given to frequent malfunctions. The Color Wall barely functioned at all for the entire decade of the 1990s. By 2003 an effort was initiated to restore and bring the Color Wall back to life. At that time, the restoration focused on replacing burned out bulbs and deteriorated colored gels, and a retiming of the synchonization system. The restoration committee also recommended that sources of additional funding be explored to replace the antiquated mechanical timing device with a modern digital computerized system. As a result of the committee’s work, Color Wall was relit in 2005. Sadly, by the end of 2007, due to the total breakdown of the mechanical device, Raleigh’s most significant work of public art went dark — again.
Now, in 2009, a rejuvenated effort to restore Color Wall is underway. NCSU Libraries has undertaken to purchase and install a professional theater-quality computerized SmartSwitch Relay, which will effectively eliminate repetitive repair on the old mechanical device. Thereby, the Color Wall might be brought back to life for many, many years to come.
Your help in this fundraising campaign is needed — and much appreciated!