New York Festival of Light (NYFOL) launches at First Light: A Celebration and Preview of New York’s First Annual Lighting Festival on Thursday, October 24 from 6:00 - 9:00 PM at the Elizabeth Street Garden in the NoLiTa neighborhood of New York City.
NYFOL is a non-profit art organization whose mission is to bring to the beauty and wonder of lighting design to New York City, launching a year-long initiative that will culminate in the city’s first annual lighting festival to be held in November 2014.
NYFOL will hold “First Light,” a special preview and sampling what will be on view at the first Annual New York Festival of Light. NYFOL is the brainchild of Ira Levy, an award-winning New York City-based lighting designer, and Liam O’Braion, a producer of large-scale entertainment events. The two have long admired the annual lighting festivals that take place worldwide in cities such as Berlin, London, Lyon, Montreal, and Sydney. The project, which has garnered the support from the lighting industry, is gaining momentum, and the idea is to give the producers an opportunity show the public a “taste” of the lighting extravaganza the likes of which New York has yet to see.
“The festival is a celebration of light, in all of its extraordinary incarnations ranging from static, interactive, and projection,” says O’Braion, “in addition to the ways artists, dancers, designers, musicians, and technologists collaborate with light to make their performances a delight for the senses.”
“With its historic monuments, the Elizabeth Street Garden provides rich texture for lighting and is an ideal canvas for our preview performance,” says Levy. “It’s a great site to show how lighting design enhances the city’s architecture and magically changes the city’s nightscape.”
Some of today’s most exciting fine and performing artists working with light are appearing at ‘First Light’ and include:
iLuminate - fresh off a run at New World Stages, uses light suit design and control to enable performers to dazzle audiences;
3_Search – a group at the intersection of fine arts, science, and technology;
Nancy Burson – an artist/photographer acclaimed for her pioneering work in morphing technologies;
Scott Chmielewski of Digital Media Designs - known for their incredible work at the Summer Olympics in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest;
Okamoto Studio – an artist collective known for their design and production of sculptures out of crystal clear ice; and others including Matilde Alessandra, Celebrity DJ Donna D’Cruz, Houndstooth, Negin Sharifzadeh, Zero Times Everything.
Limited space is available so please RSVP here.