If you're heading to DLECTRICITY, the new Detroit art festival turning Midtown into a canvas[Cheap Canvas Shoes] for light art this weekend, make sure to step slightly off the main drag for spectacular installations, discreet gems and ephemeral events.
Art Detroit Now collaborated with Midtown Detroit, Inc. to select 35 international, national and local projects from more than 200 submissions, producing the festival and offering artist stipends with a total budget of $600,000. The gathering of light art projects along the Woodward Avenue corridor will be on display Friday and Saturday.
"This is more about the experience of simply being in the midst of all this light art," said Marsha Miro, who headed up the festival's curatorial committee and is the founding director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. "You can really have an adventure as you make this journey [along Woodward]."
While some might think to skip the northernmost stop, located an entire block east of Woodward(!), the site is worth the trek. Art adventurers can find "Contour1" by heading toward the lit-up Kresge-Ford Building at John R Street and Ferry Avenue, where lighting designers Robert White and Brienne Willcock have installed a forest of 550 silver Mylar balloons in the College for Creative Studies sculpture garden. Lit from below and suspended at different heights, the balloons will reflect the new, existing and incidental light.
"We wanted the balloons to be a sort of community ... we've strung them all separately they can move independently from each other," said Willcock. "We do so much interior stuff ... but this is sort of up to nature."
The duo has designed the lighting for architectural projects nationally and locally with the Ypsilanti-based firm Illuminart. (You may recognize White's older work in the stunning Light Tunnel in the McNamara Terminal at the airport.) But White, who attended CCS, now teaches there and designed the campus' lighting several years ago, said they enjoyed the freedoms and challenges of doing "art for joy's sake" and helping people see Detroit in a new way.
They're hoping to create "a little sense of tranquility in a busy downtown area," White said.
"Reflective light is so beautiful ... but it's something we overlook," added Willcock. "We hope people will see things a little differently, even it's just for a moment, like when you pass a mirror quickly."