Underglow, a light installation inside six bays of a sidewalk shed, uses multiple colors of LEDs, high intensity prismatic reflective sheeting made for road signs, and fluorescent lights combine to create shimmering, illuminated environment.  Underglow consists of a series of panels mounted to the ceiling and wall of each bay of a sidewalk shed. The panels’ forms are determined by the structure’s posts and cross-bracing, to create a unified, harmonic whole.

Underglow is constructed of materials intended for industrial use, and located on a construction site.  Its location in a gritty, harshly built structure contrasts with its celestial design to create a sense of surprise and delight. Underglow converts our contemporary urban experience into a new kind of space, similar to an ancient cathedral covered with Byzantine mosaics.

Colonnade, a light installation at the entrance to the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station in Downtown Brooklyn, marries technology to aesthetic elements to invite pedestrians into an urban fantasy world.  Prismatic reflective sheeting forms a field of overlapping columns outlined by white light and bright LEDs, extending endlessly back into an imaginary space. The lintel above the subway entrance, exposed to bright sunlight, will be faced with an extension of the same imagery made only of the reflective sheeting.

In the daytime, the shape, color and the reflective nature of the sheeting contribute to the work. As the sun sets, the sheeting’s prismatic crystals pick up the light and start to glow.  At night, the material picks up the ambient light provided by the street lamps.

Colonnade can also be successfully adapted for placement on a temporary sidewalk shed. The overhang would be faced with the reflective sheeting, in the same manner as the lintel at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, and the upper half of the rear walls would be fitted with the backlighting, LEDs and sheeting.

In daylight, “Neo-Gothic Rockets” used the shapes of the building’s ornamentation to create a shimmering composition of industrial reflective sheeting in primary colors. At night, these shapes were backlit by the geometric glow of secondary colors that created variations of the lines of the windows and mullions. Together they created a sense of movement, amplifying the building’s architecture to mirror the urban rhythms of the neighborhood.

Reflective sheeting, gel filters, vellum, backlighting
East windows: 14′ (168″) wide x 11’2″ (134″) high
South windows: 15.75′ (189″) wide by 11’2″ (134″) high
2011

Gesture Drawings are made of LEDs and fine wire. They have mirrored and diffused sheets of plexiglass layered over one another, maintaining space between them and embedded with various colors and shapes of LEDs into the top layer’s two sides. Their wiring is on both sides as well, and the diffusion makes the wires on the bottom cast shadows visible from the top. The wires thus become gray lines and shadows that have the complex interplay of pencil drawings. I have been collecting many different colors, sizes and shapes of small LEDs, including some no longer made, with beautiful shapes such as “tombstones,” and rectangles that are transparent from the side and diffused on the top.

LEDs, wire, plexi, mylar

2010-12

LEDs, reflective sheeting, plexi, aluminum
10 boxes, each 6″ high x 33 3/8″ wide by 2 3/4″ deep
2010

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