Free Beacons to help find your way.

As we rely ever more completely on technology to locate ourselves and others in the world, these large-scale lanterns—constructed from wooden obelisks and coded nautical signal flags—serve as tools for orientation.

Each Beacon operates alone or as part of a fleet, standing on a sea of mirrors that enhances and reflects the light emitted through their sewn and pieced panels.

With an ongoing interest in analog code systems, Lacouture has collected decommissioned nautical signal flags, drawn to the way simple shapes and colors function as alphabetic glyphs carrying messages of alert or welcome. Free Beacons also pays homage to a New England vernacular, and like much of Lacouture's work, consider the notion of transforming small and humble things into tools of help or care.

Each Beacon represents a letter from the International Code of Signals. The six works here are sewn from flags with the letters S, A, F, E, Zero, and Y. They are crowned with a finial representing a tool of observation or navigation: a sundial, magnifying glass, mirror ball, bell, nautilus shell, or brass lantern.