The nine-day Napa Lighted Art Festival 2019 begins tomorrow, Saturday 12th January. A full programme features, amongst many installations, Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon, Birgit Zander and Daniel Bandke’s Language of Love, and Czech artists Hyperbinary’s Triton Genus, as well as Christopher Schardt’s Constellation Light Scuplture. All of this and Horizon from Ross Ashton and Karnen Monid’s Projection Studio. Ross and Karen have been setting up this week – and Horizon promises to be an extraordinary encounter with human fascination with the universe and our place within it. Some of the rehearsal shots are included here, from Grosseteste’s reflections on the earthbound astronomy, to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s measurement of terrestrial bioluminescence.
Horizon features several voices related to Ordered Universe, Ross and Karen, and Giles Gasper, as well as students from Giles’s Special Subject class Saints and Scholars: Learning, Love, and Reform, c. 1050-c.1250, which, possibly unsurprisingly, features Grosseteste and his world.
The Festival Symposium Series is where Ordered Universe team members come in, with our talks and activities on 17-20 January, alongside talks on medieval food and wine by Newcastle restauranteur Andy Hook and Giles Gasper – all examples from Grosseteste’s period! – and by Dr Joshua B. Fisher of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA. The Ordered Universe team represents the whole gamut of the project, from medieval specialists to scientists, and artists from Glass Art to Multi-Media Sculpture. We are very honoured to have been asked to participate, and are looking forward to meting our audiences, sharing experiences, and show-casing our collaborative and individual work. Follow us on the project blog, and social media; the Festival is on Facebook and with event hashtags: #donapalights, #NLAF, #artafterdarknapa
Wishing Ross, Karen, and all of the other artists, and organisers Karen Gregory, Erin Richardson and Pete Hangen, the very best of luck for the opening. More from us all soon!