Phantom Galleries lights up the night

INSTALLATION by PHILIP VAUGHAN, PHOTO by DAN SCOTT

Sure, the Christmas lights that illuminate Naples’ neighborhood of posh waterfront properties are great this time of year, but who wants to spend his or her holidays engaged in a staring contest with more and more things we just can’t afford? Better to take Phantom Galleries’ latest art walk through downtown. “Let There Be Light”—28 different light-based art installations located at 25 different sites—leaves you yearning (but in a different way) as you quickly skip around street corners, eager to happen upon another helping.

With glowing storefronts scattered around East Village (Third St. at Elm), Pine Ave. (at Third St.), the Promenade (at Broadway) and the Pike at Rainbow Harbor, Phantom Galleries provides an art-filled, alternative holiday experience. With our city’s empty commercial spaces filled with light installations, the practice of window-shopping is given a whole new meaning. And sure, if you want, you can still do your last-minute Christmas shopping at stores in between.

Grab a coat, a warm drink and the arm of a friend and start down at the corner of Third and Pine, where Meeson Pae Yang’s Entity—an installation of 25 Plexiglas dome figures—sits sweetly in the center of the space. Lined in a perfect square grid and lit by the electric tubes of LED lights looped inside of them, these robotic orbs look like a colony of luminous jellyfish suctioned to the concrete floor, their nervous systems radiating. Yang’s compelling installation has a way of activating your imagination; you see whimsical organisms in place of electronic pods.

Karen Lofgren’s Believer, located two storefronts down, is similar. Her Georgia O’Keefe-esque skeleton sculpture, constructed from strings of glowing, clear LED lights, appears to be a unicorn lying in the front corner of a dark room. Commenting on her work, Lofgren notes, “Our ideas about the image, in the end, are strongly influenced by what we want to believe and what we want to see.”

Down at the corner of Pine Ave. and Third St. is Joella March’s Sign Language: Between the Lines—a fitting site-specific installation, given its placement of brightly-lit, multicolored neon phrases, ironic expressions embedded in each. A mostly-green “TREASURE FREEDOM” reads “R U FREE” when you read the yellow letters separately. Within the hanging phrase “CONJURE JUSTICE,” is concealed a rich red “CON US.” In many ways emulating the work of well-known contemporary artist Bruce Nauman (who is celebrated for his neon text-based work), March’s installation encourages its viewers to decipher these neon lights, the choice medium for advertising, and recognize what is hidden in the in-between.

A few skips away, Astra Price—in an installation titled By the Light of the Window—fills 122 E. Third St. with barren clay pots of soil, lined like soldiers on the old carpeted floor of the space. At the window sill are rows of sprouting herbs and vegetables. Their limbs and leaves lean longingly toward the sill. At night, the eerie flickering of dim fluorescent lights makes the scene a chilling one, prompting you to consider various environmental concerns . . . yes, during your usual holiday spending and consumption.

Located further down, in a seven-artist group showing on the Promenade, is Justin Lui’s Water Clouds of Light. Suspended in the shadowy back corner of the spacious and empty commercial space at 170 N. Promenade are repurposed water jugs arranged to look like plastic nimbostratus billows, their centers glowing a misty white. The same whimsy that rouses us to see Yang’s domes as little creatures impels us here—with your face pressed to the glass, fogging up the pane—to see once-heavy containers as fluffy clouds.

Start anywhere—you choose your own adventure. A walking map of the tour can be found at any of the art-walk locations. Follow along with an audio guide (all you need is your cell phone) to hear a few words from each artist.

LET THERE BE LIGHT PHANTOM GALLERIES LA • EAST VILLAGE (THIRD ST & ELM), PINE AVE (AT THIRD ST), THE PROMENADE (AT BROADWAY), THE PIKE AT RAINBOW HARBOR • CELL PHONE AUDIO TOUR: 562.242.2928 • THROUGH JAN 10 • DOWNTOWNLONGBEACHARTWALK.COM

Tags: art, holidays, let there be light, Long Beach, phantom galleries