At the Phillips Collection's Goh Annex in Washington DC, cloudy, gray, drifting spirals surround archways sandwiching Vincent Van Gogh's 1889 painting The Road Menders. This cosmic, dazzling, seemingly vibrating drawing by Linn Meyers (MFA 1993) will remain on view through August 22.

Her elaborate installation is part of Intersections, a new program created by Vesela Sretenovic, the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, which is intended to enable contemporary artists to create site-specific works that complement the museum's collection of 20th-century art.

Meyers began her two-week creative process by painting the wall a deep blue, then applying pale, ghostly yellow spheres and spirals that demonstrate a clear kinship with Van Gogh. Her work is always meticulous, with delicate lines that create a feeling of intensity; it is also always a direct reflection of the present, specific to a time and place. This particular wall drawing will cease to exist—will be painted over—when the exhibition ends, a deliberate counterpoint to the imperative of preservation that is essential to most museums.

Meyers explores geometric shape, color, and pattern via beautiful and visually pleasing sequences, transporting the viewer to a state of calm and transfixion. "I approach each drawing without expectations," she says. "The images are not planned before I begin. My process embraces uncertainty and imperfection. I have a sense as I work that perhaps a dazzling or compelling visual effect might be generated, but I’m never sure."

In 2007–8 Meyers was an artist in residence at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, also in Washington DC. In 2009 she received a Smithsonian Art Research Fellowship. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Broad Street Review, and the Washington Post, and her work has been exhibited across the United States and in Japan.

Watch a video of Meyers creating her installation.