The Olympia Arts & Heritage Alliance Museum is brightening downtown with Light in the Dark, an exhibition of illuminated art that can be viewed not only from inside the museum but also from the sidewalk outside.
“We wanted to do something that would lighten our windows and celebrate the holiday season without leaning into any particular holiday,” said Ruth Kodish-Eskind, the museum’s exhibitions and programs manager. “And we wanted something that folks could engage with even when the museum is closed.” The panels describing the pieces are double-sided, so passersby can get the full experience.
The exhibit, a collaboration with the Illuminate Oly Project (https://www.instagram.com/illuminate.oly/), showcases a diverse array of pieces that represent a range of the ways local artists are using light in their work.
John Corzine’s Beneath the Bark, a series of pendant lights made of wood veneers, and Jay T. Scott’s wood-veneer sconces incorporating papercuts by Nikki McClure, cast a warm light that feels homey and inviting, evoking firelight.
Dave Sederberg’s String Theory, which shimmers under black light, is a 10-foot-tall stack of blocks that pays tribute to the way physicists understand the universe as made up of tiny, vibrating strings. The piece is part of Sederberg’s Precarious Stacks series, which began as an outdoor installation during the pandemic.
“The isolation and well-merited fear of the early pandemic … highlighted the ephemeral nature of all that we hold most dear — beauty, health, democracy, art — the best of life,” Sederberg wrote in an artist’s statement (https://mollariart.com/retrospective/). “It’s a balancing act to live fully with the caution owed to real threats.”
Parts of Stacks were created in collaboration with lighting designer Natalie Coblenz, whose Don’t Cry Over Spilt Light, a tangle of upcycled LED lights, is also on view in the show. “This piece is to remind us of the interconnectedness between us,” Coblenz wrote on Illuminate Oly’s Instagram page.
Also part of Illuminate Oly is Ayda Rose, whose Year of the Dragon uses a light box to illuminate a digital print.
Also on view is Procession Sealife, a set of cane-and-paper lanterns created by Joyce Mercuri, Kris Geringer and Linda Halgrin for the Luminary Procession, which happens the night before the Procession of the Species in April. The glowing lanterns bring memories of spring into the darkness of winter.
The exhibition incorporates information on the development of streetlights in Olympia, reflecting the museum’s mission to showcase both art and history.
“In Olympia, we light our streets to extend the functional hours of the day, to make evening travel safer and to spread holiday cheer,” an information panel explains.
Photos by Laurie Mott.
WHAT:
Light in the Dark
WHEN:
Solstice party from 4 to 7 p.m. Dec. 21.
Exhibition on view through April 14.
Winter hours are noon to p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. (You can see the art through the museum windows after dark, too.)
Where:
Olympia AHA Museum, 203 Columbia St. NW, Olympia
LEARN MORE:
https://www.olyaha.org/light-in-the-dark