GLOW in the Park 2017

In October 2017, the Fairmount Park Conservancy invited hundreds of friends, members and partners to the Reflecting Pool at the Horticulture Center for GLOW in the Park, our annual fall fundraiser.

Following an open call for artists, Philadelphia artists David Guinn and Robert Goodman designed a custom piece entitled Glowing Gardens, a monumental LED installation composed of wood, mylar, paint, mirrored plexiglass, and a combination of LED and spotlights. Glowing Gardens filled the Reflecting Pool with dynamic displays of changing colored lights.

The installation played with traditional garden and architectural structures and responded to the formal axes of the landscape with abstracted and larger-than-life geometric forms. The movement of both the water and the surrounding crowd was reflected in the mirrored surfaces of the installation, including an 8′ mirrored obelisk that stood in the center of the pool.

Special thanks to Philadelphia Scenic Works for the structural fabrication of this piece.

 

Artist Statement

As artists, the reflective surface of the pool inspires us. Our installation multiplies these reflections in prismatic ways to evoke the untenable containment of the natural world: a tension embodied in sites like public parks, the very spaces GLOW celebrates and supports. These are spaces that balance formal planning and management with the vagaries and unpredictablities of the natural world.

This work consists of five structures that represent enlarged, exaggerated, and abstracted variations of garden architectural elements. Symmetry emphasizes and reinforces the formality of the pool and illuminated and reflective elements create a sense of thick natural space punctuated by severe bold shapes.

Artists

David Guinn is an artist based in Philadelphia, working primarily in public space. A graduate of Columbia University in New York City, he was originally trained as an architect. His work centers on large scale painted murals and immersive installations featuring a combination of painted surfaces and LED lighting. David has created public and private commissions throughout Philadelphia and other cities worldwide including Amman, Jordan, Montreal, Quebec, New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, and Charlottesville, VA. He is the recipient of a Knight Arts Challenge grant, an Independence Foundation Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. His work has been widely noted in the media. David is on the faculty of Moore College of Art and Design and Arcadia University.

Robert Goodman is a Philadelphia-based painter who received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA from Tyler School of Art. His work has been shown widely at ZG Gallery in Chicago, Peter Fingesten Gallery and Anna Kustera Gallery in New York, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, and Vox Populi, Seraphin Gallery, and The Galleries at Moore in Philadelphia. He has presented work at Pace University, Sarah Lawrence College, Emery and Henry College, and Rutgers University and his work was recently acquired by the Woodmere Art Museum. Robert is an Assistant Professor at Moore College of Art and Design.

Read our Q+A with the artists here.