Art is meant to illuminate, and a series of installations called “Your Light Is Central” went live in Cambridge’s Central Square this week to make that literal: The 10 works by Boston’s Masary Studios use elaborate LED constructs to spotlight murals, highlight sidewalks and pop up in surprising places and ways along Massachusetts Avenue. And it’s just Phase 1.
The work, introduced with a Thursday party at the Street Theory Gallery & Collective, is backed by Central Square’s Business Improvement District and implemented by Masary, the six-person team whose intense lighting and displays called “Solstice” sell out every holiday season at Mount Auburn Cemetery. The team also did the display on the facade of the Dance Complex when it turned 25 in 2016 and celebrated with a Central Square street party.
“Your Light Is Central” has been in the works for three years, and actual installation of the low-energy LEDs down the avenue past Jill Brown Rhone Park has taken place over the past two. Ryan Edwards, a co-founder and principal of the light design firm, explained how during a break from the launch party.
After working together on a few smaller projects over the years, BID president Michael Monestime and Edwards couldn’t help but think bigger: “Light is a powerful tool. Nightlife and energy in Central Square is alive. How do those things come together to tell a rich story, or illuminate the rich stories that are happening,” Edwards said. “That was the beginning.”
Permission from businesses and property owners was granted, access to rooftops arranged, wireless networking tied in, power connected and custom engineering figured out so each mechanical piece is safe and durable – “in the middle of a blizzard next winter, it will still be bumping,” Edwards said – without having to be permanently affixed. “If that’s not the right spot for that piece of light, we can move it to the other end of the block. We get that things change and an urban fabric evolves,” he said. “Everything’s redeployable.”
He likes that someone might emerge from a restaurant and find themselves awash in a surprise burst of light – and likes to imagine that the response will be an appreciative, “Yeah, man, Central Square.”
Edwards said he was excited to be returning for a sixth year of “Solstice,” and that Mount Auburn Cemetery has been a great partner. Edwards was rhapsodic over finding a similar experience in Central Square, with another proposal of an ongoing, ever-changing and growing art environment. “When someone trusts you as an artist and says ‘Let’s make something special together in this space,’ those are life-changing relationships,” he said.
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