The man responsible for posting over 1,500 “empathy” signs around the area is steering clear of Arlington and some other Northern Virginia locales these days.
That’s because an unknown person or entity has been taking down the handmade markers meant to encourage greater human connection and understanding. In Arlington, in Falls Church and as far out as Annandale, the signs — which started appearing in 2022 — started going missing from utility poles sometime around March.
“I’ve lost 50, 75, 100? I don’t know,” the artist, a 57-year-old Bethesda man who requested to remain anonymous, told ARLnow. “I gave up at a certain point. A few months ago, I just stopped going there.”
The signs, which simply say “empathy” in an array of colorful designs, are technically illegal in some areas. The Maryland State Highway Administration removed one from the Beltway last year, and it’s possible that the Virginia Department of Transportation has done the same.
“We are not familiar with these signs at all, but if they were illegally placed (overpasses, attached or in state right-of-way, etc.) our crews could have taken them down,” VDOT spokesperson Michelle Holland told ARLnow.
But the artist — who embarked on this project after a cancer diagnosis and a severe medical emergency upended his life — thinks the culprit is an individual, rather than a government agency. The signs tend to vanish from residential neighborhoods, rather than major roads, and screws and fragments of signs are often left behind after their removal.
The Arlington County Zoning Ordinance allows for non-commercial signs “anywhere commercial signs are allowed,” county spokesperson Erika Moore told ARLnow.
“The Zoning Ordinance also specifically allows non-commercial signs in certain locations, including single-family properties in R-districts, and (under Section 13.11.2) in the public right-of-way,” she said. “Regulations for signs on utility poles would be enforced by the utility company that owns the pole, and VDOT is responsible for enforcing its own sign regulations.”
If the culprit is an individual, they seem to be going to a lot of trouble. The artist uses a ladder to put the signs up, and intentionally places them across a wide geographic area.
“My friends have concluded that someone thinks the signs are a political statement,” he said. “If this is their belief, the person is completely misunderstanding my motivation for hanging the signs.”
The project began after a cancer flare-up left the artist almost completely paralyzed in the hospital for about a month. A former school teacher, he suffered severe neurological damage that makes him unable to work and makes many mental activities, like reading, very difficult.
His experiences have instilled him with deep gratitude toward society.
“If I didn’t have insurance and all this stuff, I’d be dead,” he said. “I’d have died.”
He sees this project as “a little way I can give something positive back to the world” — which makes the removal of the signs all the more disheartening.
“This isn’t political,” he insists. “If we can’t have empathy within the Beltway — you know, the people who work here and everything like that — we are going to be in big trouble.”
The artist remains hard at work elsewhere in the D.C. area, where he estimates that he has probably placed around 1,700 or 1,800 signs. Of these, he believes about 1,500 are still in place.
Material for the signs only cost about $3 or $4 each, but they take around one to three hours to create. Every design incorporates the word “empathy” acting in a relationship with another design element, symbolizing connection between two people. The blue background, meanwhile, symbolizes the world or God.
Though the artist was initially angry with whoever was taking down the signs, these days he feels “a little sad for the person” and “perplexed” by the amount of effort they seem to have invested.
His message for them: “I’m sorry that for some reason these have offended you. It was my intention that these would be a positive… addition to our world, and I’m sorry. I wish they wouldn’t bother you.”
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