Image courtesy of City of Alexandria
"Now or Never" by Alicia Eggert is on display at the Alexandria waterfront.
For one fleeting morning this month, the sunrise over the Potomac will do something it does only once a year. As daybreak arrives on Sunday, June 21 — the summer solstice — the sun will climb directly into the narrow passageway between the two towering sculptures of artist Alicia Eggert's Now or Never at Old Town Alexandria's Waterfront Park, slipping neatly into the gap between the word "NOW" and the word "NEVER."
It is no accident. Eggert rotated the artwork 22 degrees north of true east precisely so that, on this single morning, the sun would rise in alignment with the space between her two signs — turning a meditation on time into something like a seasonal sundial, and tying a deeply human question to the larger rhythms of the natural world.
Photo by Laura Hatcher
"Now or Never" artist Alicia Eggert
The City of Alexandria and the artist are inviting the public to witness the alignment in person. Visitors and photographers are encouraged to gather beginning at 5:30 a.m., with sunrise arriving at 5:43 a.m. Coming early is the key: the moment is brief, and the best vantage points within the passageway fill up fast. Get into position, and you'll have the chance to capture — and share — a celestial alignment that won't repeat until next year.
A dialogue you can walk through
Now or Never is built on a scale that's hard to miss. Two billboard-style sculptures, each roughly 17.5 feet tall and 40 feet long and supported by steel framing reminiscent of roadside signs, stand face to face across a narrow gap. One declares "NOW" in black letters on white; the other answers "NEVER" in white on black. From a distance the work reads as stark black and white, but step closer and the surfaces dissolve into a matrix of colored dots. A ground mural of radiating gray lines spreads out beneath like the face of an hourglass, a quiet reminder that time is the real subject here.
The design invites participation. By walking the passageway between the two opposing words, visitors physically occupy the space between extremes — an experience Eggert intends as a small act of finding common ground, even in polarized times.
The phrase resonates on more than one level. Collectively, now or never speaks to the global challenges in which hesitation means opportunity lost. Individually, it lands closer to home: a reminder that every moment is a turning point, a chance to choose one's future and to live deliberately from this moment forward.
The artist behind the signs
Alicia Eggert is a Dallas-born interdisciplinary artist who has built her practice around giving physical form to intangible things — chiefly language and time. She is perhaps best known for text-based neon, including Ours, the glowing sculpture that appeared outside the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. Her work has been shown at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing and the Triennale in Milan, among others.
About the series
Now or Never is the eighth installation in Site See: New Views in Old Town, the City of Alexandria Public Art Program's annual series of temporary public art that draws residents and visitors to Waterfront Park to encounter contemporary work in a historic setting. It follows Nekisha Durrett's Break Water.
The sculptures are on view through November 2026 at Waterfront Park, 1 Prince St. But the solstice alignment is a one-morning affair — so if you want to see the sun rise squarely between now and never, see you June 21!
Now or Never by Alicia Eggert is presented by the City of Alexandria's Public Art Program. More information is available at alexandriava.gov/PublicArt.
