GLOW SITES BY ARTISTS
GLOW SITES IN DOWNTOWN TROY
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GLOW SITES BY PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS
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PUBLIC ART Light Festival in Downtown Troy *TROY GLOW*
Troy Glow was a dazzling, temporary public art light festival in downtown Troy that ran nightly for five weeks, from December 4th, 2022 through January 9th, 2023.
Troy Glow features 6 beautiful outdoor installations of light-based art created by regional artists. In addition, 8 partner organizations created unique light displays, for a total of 14 Troy Glow sites in a walkable route through historic downtown Troy.
Troy Glow was created to give downtown Troy a “glow up” during the holiday season, which is also the time of year when there is the least amount of daylight. Visitors, shoppers, and diners were able to enjoy all the city of Troy has to offer while experiencing a unique, contemporary art light festival.
Donna’s Italian Restaurant, Broadway & Franklin Alley
Adam Frelin (he/him) installed a cluster of whimsical signs in various shapes and colors whose lights will dance in a choreographed sequence.
For Troy Glo’s signature project, artist Adam Frelin conceived a large project composed of eight large signs of various shapes and primary colors, installed at the corner of a prominent building on Broadway and Franklin Alley.
Importantly, the signs contain no text but are “empty” colors and shapes. Half of the signs face north/south and half face east/west, so the artwork is visible from all surrounding blocks including Franklin Alley and Monument Square.
Each sign is lit with a gentle, colored light and turns on/off and dims/brightens in a pattern created by a professional musician with experience in creating cinematic scores. Empty Signs provides visitors and passersby with a meditative and choreographed visual experience on what is a usually busy and cacophonous part of downtown the city.
While most signage individuals encounter in the urban environment are either trying to sell something or give directions, Empty Signs will do the opposite: it will invite viewers to enjoy the moment and to be fully present.
adamfrelin.com Instagram: @adamfrelin
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 58 3rd Street
Lydia Kern (she/her) created a monumental standing sculpture referencing the visual language of stained glass to echo the beloved Tiffany windows in St. Paul’s church.
Artist Lydia Kern created a large sculpture in dialogue with the historic Tiffany stained glass windows in St. Paul’s church. The 20-foot tall “Efflorescence” is made of hot pink acrylic and hand-sewn pockets of transparent, fluorescent material that contains plants collected in the capital region.
While stained glass traditionally casts light onto the interior of holy spaces through religious imagery, “Efflorescence” casts a colorful light onto Third Street, celebrating and preserving ecological life specific to Troy, located on the traditional lands of the Kanien’keháka and Muh-he-con-neok people.
Lydia Kern’s sculptural installation work reflects on physical and ephemeral acts of care by collecting, reclaiming, and preparing materials to create a weighty material poetic. The vinyl stained glass ‘quilts’ have objects and plant matter sewn and sealed tightly in place, creating an expansive plane of lightness and transparency, inviting the viewer into the tension between decay and preservation beyond time. With roots in the capital region, she now lives and works in Burlington, Vermont on unceded Abenaki sovereign Territory. Lydia opened a solo show at Epsilon Spires in April 2022, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, the Lab Program in Mexico City, the Generator, and AS220. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 2015 with bachelor’s degrees in social work and studio art.
lydiakern.com Instagram: @lydeia
Upper Windows of the Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street Adam Tinkle (he/him) projected colorful video animations onto the upper floors of the Arts Center to create a large digital clock face.
Troy Farillon by artist Adam Tinkle is a video-audio projection that transformed the upper windows in a prominent Monument Square building into an ever-changing clock each evening. Abstract shapes and patterns in digital test pattern colors and staticky-TV black and white animations will illuminate the windows in a circle/square relationship suggestive of a clock face. On each evening hour (between 5 and 9 PM), chimes announced a sharp shift in the projection, which then displayed a short kaleidoscopic spectacle.
Tinkle is interested in the tradition of large clocks in public spaces that for centuries have helped citizens to collectively keep track of and share time and space. During the time of the year when the Capital Region experiences the least amount of daylight, and in a historical moment when individuals’ intake of screen light infringes on their real-world experience, Troy Farillon offers a visual mediation on the relationships among light, time, our bodies, and the public square.
adamtinkle.com Instagram: @trinkletinklesound
(back of) Key Bank Building, 33 3rd Street
Natan Diacon-Furtado (he/they) worked with community members to project colorful patterns that reflect Troy’s diverse architecture and history.
Artist Natan Diacon-Furtado created a large projection at Broadway and Franklin Alley. The projected images were composed of diverse patterns made from shapes and gestures gathered from their research into Troy’s history and architecture. Natan hosted community workshops before the installation where individuals can engage with his shapes and their own histories to create individualized patterns to be projected at special intervals of the project so that Troy’s dynamic citizenry can be reflected writ large on the urban landscape.
Natan is a Brazilian and American collaborative artist and designer trained as a cultural anthropologist and architect. Their work embraces a globally southern heritage of fundamental geometries and pattern-making as visual translation devices for experiencing and exploring issues of race, identity, and community through collaboration. They have been the subject of two solo museum shows at Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (2022) and Indiana University’s Wiley House Museum (2021), with additional exhibitions at Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery (2021), PlySpace (2020), and group showings at The REEF (2022), Terrain Biennial (2021), De 7 a 5 (2021), Stella Jones Gallery (2021), Peep Space (2021), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014), Delft Architectural Biennial (2014), and Buenos Aires Biennale of Architecture (2013).
Natan’s residencies and fellowships include collaborations with Aomori Contemporary Art Center (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2021) Indiana University (2021) and PlySpace / Ball State University (2019). In addition, their design work has been named one of the “World’s Greatest Places” by TIME Magazine. Their work engages ambiguity, loose-ness and a make-do attitude to allow for deep and wide-ranging collaborations that imbue basic forms and patterns with shared meaning: crafting spaces and projects that act as community architectures and living archives.
diaconfurtado.com Instagram: @dfnatandf
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Franklin Alley and State Street
Yael Erel (she/her) and Avner Ben-Natan (he/him) created an animation in reflective light on the back facade of one of Troy’s most beloved historic buildings.
In Reflecting on Troy, artists Yael Erel and Avner Ben-Natan projected a moving lightscape in the back alley of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. By shining high-powered, directional lights onto rotating metal disks, the artists created reflected swirls on the urban landscape. The disk’s surfaces were etched with Troy-inspired geometries that create textured light drawings as they reflect light.
Yael Erel and Avner Ben-Natan collaborate in the intersection of two disciplines, architecture and light. Together they established lightexture, creating unique designer lamps and installations. Their work ranges between sculpture and light projection.
Yael Erel is a light artist, architect and educator interweaving light optics research with teaching and practice. As light became the focus of Erel’s work, she pursued her graduate studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to deepen her knowledge of light as material. For almost two decades, Erel has been immersed in architectural education, having taught architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design,The Cooper Union, Columbia University and Pratt Institute. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture, teaching architecture and lighting.
Avner Ben-Natan has been working with light as material since the early 90s in his work as a lighting designer in films and television. In 2008, he began to extend the work with light into the design of light fixtures, environments for art installations, and residential and commercial projects. He has been the partner in charge of lightexture manufacturing and operations since 2008.
lightexture.com Instagram: @lightexture + @yaelerel_light Facebook: Lightexture
River Street Stairwell
Julian Goldman (he/him) and Avi Nagel (he/him) strung wind-powered lanterns, inspired by Troy’s famous waterwheel, across a large public square.
Troy residents Julian Goldman and Avi Nagel created a public workshop to test a series of kinetic lanterns that make visible the hidden power of the environment while connecting the city’s prosperous past to an optimistic future. Their installation draws inspiration from the Burden Water Wheel, the most powerful known waterwheel in US history and a driving force behind Troy’s prosperous past. Reimagining this historic water power, “The Wind Wheels Project” instead harnesses the wind, making visible a natural force in a novel way.
Born 12 days apart, cousins Avi Nagel and Julian Goldman have been conspiring to build things for 36 years. Now with a depth of experience in creative fields and both living in Troy with their two young families, they are excited to show their work in public for the first time.
Avi is an architectural designer who has worked for the New York City Subway and the Parks Department and was previously an educator. He has a deep love of cities, infrastructure and art.
Julian is an internationally exhibiting artist, industrial designer, and former commercial fisherman whose work ranges from the installation-scale textile collaboration “c o m p u t e r 1.0” to the commercial development of mycelium leather.
*Due to unforeseen weather and extreme winds this winter, the wind wheels have sustained some damage. We are working on their repair.
openjulian.com Instagram: @juliansgees
neon, aluminum framing, wiring, 2022
Vicina- Modern Urban Flats 100 Congress St. (viewable from 4th and Congress Streets), River Street Stairwell
“You are the sky everything else is just the weather.” – Ani Pema Chödron
In my experience of being human, life is an ongoing alternation of feelings – connected & disconnected, large & small, overwhelming & numbing. This work- titled ‘The Weather ‘ serves as a reminder of our significance and insignificance, our peacefulness and our turmoil, our interconnectedness and our individuality, as well as the temporality of it all.
How do we reside in being the sky and appreciate the constant parade and patterns of the weather?
Erika deVries is a mother, artist, seeker, fairy tale reader, teller and believer based in New York’s Hudson River Valley region. For nearly two decades, Erika has been creating and relating embodied experiences across the disciplines of photography, performance, neon, video and handcraft. Her works, rendered in neon, are handwritten transcriptions dictated to her children, loved ones or in her own handwriting, which crystallize the moments when language and meaning coalesce. Together with her life partner, matt dilling, she co-founded Cygnets Way, in Kingston, NY. Cygnets Way provides interdisciplinary art & spirituality programming including; lectures, exhibitions, classes, workshops, healing work and screenings to activate cross pollination, center wonder and renew points of view.
Vicina- Modern Urban Flats 100 Congress St. (viewable from 4th and Congress Streets), River Street Stairwell
Mollie McKinley’s installation includes three soft sculptures made from photographs printed on textiles, as well as a sculpture made from carved salt, blown glass, and neon. The wall works depict natural phenomena such as oil spillage, waterfall froth, jelly fungus, and light-dappled water flowing over stone. McKinley’s work unites the visceral with the ethereal, as collaborative healing spells between human and earth.
www.molliemckinley.com Instagram: @mollie_mckinley
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. 30 2nd St.
Lit the sidewalk in front of their entrance with an art installation designed by their in-house creative team.
TAP, INC. 210 River St.
Lit their storefront windows with an art installation designed by their in-house architectural team.
Tech Valley Center of Gravity. 30 3rd St.
Will be showcasing the work of TVCOG member Jerry Huang, who just completed a term as our Maker-in-Residence. He will be adapting the Arduino-controlled LED mirror panel design used for his residency into a window installation.
Hart Cluett Museum. 57 2nd St.
Worked with local artist and filmmaker Nicole Van Slyke to light their façade/windows.
Vicina – Modern Urban Flats. 100 Congress St. (viewable from 4th and Congress Streets)
Showcased artist installations by artists Mollie McKinley and Erika deVries in their large picture windows on 4th Street.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. 58 3rd St.
Temporarily lit two of their famed Tiffany stained glass windows which are usually only viewable from inside the church.
lightexture 2 3rd St.
Shop owners Yael Erel and Avner Ben-Natan (Troy Glow commissioned artists), also created a storefront installation featuring prototypes and technology related to their “Reflecting on Troy” installation.
RPI. Arts Center Foyer and Faculty/Student Gallery 265 River St.
Architecture students in Troy Glow artist, and RPI professor, Yael Erel’s Projecting Light class will showcase their lighting design installations in The Art’s Center’s Foyer and Faculty/Student galleries.
Artists: Christiana Bevilacqua, Christopher Yip, Rebecca Victori, Joseph Pelton, Daniel Cureno, Morgan Palacios, Darnell Clement, Oliver Ma, Qingyang Xu, Yishu Yu
Troy Glow was presented by the Arts Center of the Capital Region, in partnership with ______. The project was also made possible through support from sponsor ______ and individual friends of the project.
Troy Glow was created by partners at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy Cultural Alliance, and the Rensselaer County Chamber of Commerce to bring visitors, shoppers, and diners back to downtown Troy after two years of pandemic precautions when many people moved to online commerce, frequent take-out, and virtual events.
Project Director/Lead Curator- Judie Gilmore
Artistic/Technical Director- Adam Frelin
Project Manager- Isabella Burnett
Troy Glow is presented by the Arts Center for the Capital Region in partnership with the Troy Cultural Alliance and the Rensselaer County Regional Chamber of Commerce. This project is supported by a grant awarded to the Arts Center of the Capital Region by Empire State Development and I LOVE NY/New York State’s Division of Tourism through the Regional Economic Development Council initiative.
The festival is made possible through support from the Opalka Family, Troy Redevelopment Foundation, City of Troy American Rescue Plan (proposed), Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation, Rifenburg Construction, Inc., National Grid, Siemens, The Rosenblum Companies, CDTA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Westshore Design Engineers, Phinney Design Group, Nicky Lightz, and many individual friends of the project.
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