14 Sites. 5 Blocks. 25 minute walk.
Troy Glow is a dazzling, temporary public art light festival in downtown Troy that will run nightly for five weeks, starting December 4, 2022 through January 9, 2023.
Troy Glow features 6 beautiful outdoor installations of light-based art created by regional artists. In addition, 8 partner organizations created their own 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 can enjoy all the city has to offer AND experiencing a unique contemporary art light festival.
This is the inaugural presentation of Troy Glow which we hope will continue!
Meet the Artists
Adam Frelin, Empty Signs
Donna’s Italian Restaurant, Broadway & Franklin Alley
Adam Frelin (he/him) will install 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 has proposed a large project composed of eight large signs of various shapes and primary colors that will be installed at the corner of a prominent building on Broadway and Franklin Alley. Importantly, the signs will contain no text, but will be “empty” colors and shapes. Half of the signs will face north/south and half will face east/west, so the artwork will be visible from all surrounding blocks including Franklin Alley and Monument Square. Each sign will be lit with a gentle, colored light and will turn on/off and dim/brighten in a pattern created by a professional musician with experience in creating cinematic scores. Empty Signs will provide 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
Adam Tinkle, Troy Farillon
Upper Windows of the Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street
Adam Tinkle (he/him) will project 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 will transform 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 9pm), chimes will announce a sharp shift in the projection, which will display 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 screenlight 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
Lydia Kern, Efflorescence (Icon for Blooming)
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 58 3rd Street
Lydia Kern (she/her) will create a monumental standing sculpture that uses the visual language of stained glass to echo the beloved Tiffany windows in St. Paul’s church.
Artist Lydia Kern will create a large sculpture in dialogue with the historic Tiffany stained glass windows in St. Paul’s church. The 20-foot tall “Efflorescence” will be made of hot pink acrylic and hand-sewn pockets of transparent, fluorescent material that contain plants collected in the capital region. While stained glass traditionally casts light onto the interior of holy spaces through religious imagery, “Efflorescence” will cast 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
Yael Erel + Avner Ben-Natan, Reflecting on Troy
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Franklin Alley and State Street
Yael Erel (she/her) and Avner Ben-Natan (he/him) will create 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 will project a moving lightscape in the back alley of one of Troy’s most famous buildings, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. By shining high-powered, directional lights onto rotating metal disks, the artists will create reflected swirls on the urban landscape. The disk’s surfaces will be etched with Troy inspired geometries that create textured light drawings as they reflect light.
lightexture.com Instagram: @lightexture + @yaelerel_light Facebook: Lightexture
Natan Diacon-Furtado, Our Patterns, Our Architectures
(back of) Key Bank Building, 33 3rd Street
Natan Diacon-Furtado (he/they) will work with community members to project colorful patterns that reflect Troy’s diverse architecture and history.
Artist Natan Diacon-Furtado will create a large projection at Broadway and Franklin Alley. The projected images will be composed of diverse patterns made from shapes and gestures gathered from their research into Troy’s history and architecture. Natan plans to host 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
Julian Goldman and Avi Nagel, The Wind Wheels Project
River Street Stairwell
Julian Goldman (he/him) and Avi Nagel (he/him) will string wind-powered lanterns, inspired by Troy’s famous waterwheel, across a large public square.
Troy residents Julian Goldman and Avi Nagel will create 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.
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
The Weather
neon, aluminum framing, wiring
2022
Vicina- Modern Urban Flats 100 Congress St. (viewable from 4th and Congress Streets)
“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)
From left to right:
Illuminated Ground Oil Drip, 2021. Photograph on padded and cauterized canvas; recycled quilt batting; neon.
Mercury Spill, 2022. Photographic collage on padded and cauterized canvas; recycled quilt batting; plywood.
Illuminated Sulphuric Infusion, 2021. Photographic collage on padded and cauterized canvas; neon; recycled quilt batting.
Saline Sulphur Butter, 2022. Sulphurized salt, blown glass, neon.
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 / IG: @mollie_mckinley
PARTNER SITES: The following organizations and locations will be participating in Troy Glow:
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. 30 2nd St.
Will light the sidewalk in front of their entrance with an art installation designed by their in-house creative team.
TAP, INC. 210 River St.
Will light 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.
Will work with local artist and filmmaker Nicole Van Slyke to light their façade or windows.
Vicina – Modern Urban Flats. 100 Congress St. (viewable from 4th and Congress Streets)
Will showcase 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.
Will temporarily light 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), will also create 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
Free Trolley Rides
Friday Dec. 16, Saturday Dec. 17, 5-8pm
Trolley will depart approximately every half hour from the Arts Center.
Glow into the Gallery
Know before you GLOW!
Troy Glow is FREE and great for all ages.
Troy Glow projects are lit nightly from 4-11p.m., Dec. 4, 2022 through Jan. 9, 2023.
Projects can be viewed anytime during these hours, but we encourage you to start your journey at the Arts Center of the Capital Region where you can get a map, see Troy Glow gallery exhibitions, and access restrooms.
HOLIDAY WEEK HOURS
- Wednesday 12/28 4-8pm
- Thursday 12/29 4-8pm
- FRIDAY 12/30 4-8pm
During Troy Glow, sunset is around 4:30 p.m., and twilight lasts approximately 90 minutes.
Best nights to visit are Thursdays and Fridays when the most downtown businesses and restaurants will be open.
Signs at each site will include a QR code that links to information about each project.
Parking meters are active until 5pm on weekdays (M-F). After 5pm, and on weekends and holidays, you can park for free downtown and in all city-operated parking lots and garages. Visit TroyGlow.com/park for info. on municipal lots.
Don’t want to walk? A free trolly visiting Troy Glow sites will be available on Fridays, December 9th and December 16th, 5-8pm.
Info. about Troy shopping,dining, and businesses can be found at Downtowntroy.org.
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.
Troy Redevelopment Fund
The Opalka Family
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
® I LOVE NEW YORK is a registered trademark and service mark
of the New York State Department of Economic Development;
used with permission.
Gallery Hours
Monday-Thursday: 9am-7:30pm
Friday: 9am-4pm
Saturday: 9am-5pm
Sunday: 12pm-4pm
All exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Exhibits are sponsored by Karen + Chet Opalka, and the Marcelle Foundation.