In Progress: Light Artist JIM CAMPBELL's Installation of "Scattered Light" At Madison Square Park

(See the night time photos from the Scattered Light Premiere at Madison Square Park)

Last Sunday, I captured these images of workers installing a new artwork by San Francisco-based light artist , JIM CAMPBELL at Madison Square Park. The art installation will open tomorrow, October 21. The main piece, called "Scattered Light" is being installed in the park's central oval lawn and features 3-D matrix of about 2,000 LEDs hanging on an 80-feet-wide support and displaying flickering human silhouettes when seen from a certain vantage point. (information from http://www.nycgovparks.org/art and https://www.madisonsquarepark.org). From other angles, the play of flickering lights will seem abstract, but still beautiful and interesting to watch. The main piece will be accompanied by two other components for the show that will run through this fall and winter (December 10).

Mr. Campbell was first trained as an engineer, and most of his work incorporates very complex lighting rigs, elaborate video systems and very unconventional screens. The centerpiece of his show this spring at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea, Exploded View, looked like a group of elegant, scintillating light garlands, except at one angle, from which a short video loop showed a human silhouette running, falling, getting up and running again until it fell. "Scattered Light" will be very similar, except that the blinking light-bulb figures will be life-sized.