Artina 2020: LIGHT: A Sculptural Solar Dance

ARTINA 2020: LIGHT: A Sculptural Solar Dance is the perfect outdoor activity to enjoy during these times of social distancing. This all-outdoor, juried sculpture garden by members of the Washington Sculptors Group (WSG) will be on exhibit from August 5 through November 7 throughout the rustic museum grounds. Guests may view the exhibit during daylight hours, any day of the week, no reservations required.

As climate change concerns continue to rise, we need to increase the uptake of renewable energy to help reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels. In this exhibit, LIGHT: A Sculptural Solar Dance, artists used renewable energy sculptures to represent a need for better environmental responsibility. Work in this exhibition re-imagines solar energy as an art form. It adopts sunlight as the medium, the subject matter, or the energy source of the art. Artists explored how light, sun, sound, and energy intersect, capturing the importance of sustainability by using solar energy in existing or site-specific outdoor sculptures: art made from sunlight—the energy source for life on Earth. Visitors will be able to find sculptural displays celebrating the energy of the sun’s warming rays.

In thinking through the dance between art and light, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s and American artist James Turrell’s thoughts may come to mind:

“I am obsessed with light. How light forms a space. How a space forms light. As a child I grew up in Iceland where there is no sunlight in the winter. It simply stays dark all day. Light became something that pulled people together. Light became a way of connecting to other people. Light is social. Light is life.”
—Olafur Eliasson

“Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.”
—James Turrell

Participating Artists
Jean Kim Sun Burst, Beyond the Spectrum
Jeff Chyatte Resolute II, Labyrinth
Davide Prete Renewable Energy Policies
Ira Tattelman Photosynthesis
Carol Brown Goldberg Sundance
James Mallos Noon Meeting, Equinoctal Beeline
Marc Robarge Tree of Illuminations Sarah
Rodman Be Here Now

About the Juror
María Gabriela (“Gaby”) Mizes is originally from Argentina. She graduated from the Instituto Argentina de MuseologÍa in Buenos Aires and Columbia University in New York and has worked around the world for many museums and art institutions. These include the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as Assistant Curator of the traveling exhibition Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century; and the American Federation of Arts, where she handled traveling exhibitions in the United States and abroad.

In Washington, DC, Gaby founded Latin American ERA, a private consultancy company providing expertise in exhibitions and art collections management for national and international projects, and has worked for the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and several private art collections. She is currently the Director of Registration at Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, where she has been coordinating exhibition installations, managing the outgoing loans program, planning and designing art storage facilities, and caring for the collection for thirteen years.