LoveLite – The inaugural collaboration for Tribal Truth, is a controlled lighting installation on an open field that features a 60’ steel tower (pictured below without the top attached) and celebrates the spirit of a global village. The work evolved from Richmond Burton’s and James Ferrari’s ideas about utilizing an overgrown and partially destroyed steel tower located on Ferrari’s property in Bellport, New York. The tower had been previously constructed in a grid form, and Burton’s primary compositional tool is often a grid.
In LoveLite, the artists expanded the grid element into the notion of meridian lines on a map, and suddenly the meridian lines extend off the tower and into the 130 by 70 foot field at the tower’s base. The artists used colored rope lights and controlled theatrical lighting to realize vibrant intersecting lines that surround and consume the artists and viewer. The Tower, 10’ x 10’ square at its base, seems to sprout from the world grid as its diagonal steel beams converge at a mirrored orb, a luminous geosphere, which reflects the light and energy of the field, channeling and distributing from its apex the spirit of a world working together.
From close-up, the viewer is interactively involved with the movement of the majestic light-layered grid. From a further perspective, the individual is invited to assume a macrocosmic perspective as they can view the component parts working together in a delicate, interrelated balance between the planet and our influence over it, as portrayed by ever-moving lines of colored lights. The work can be installed in large outdoor areas, or it has been documented for gallery exhibition in a video triptych.
Original recordings of Ugandan chanting obtained by Ferrari while working in the rainforest there were also played at the exhibition.
A documentary of the installation and exhibition is in post-production and planned to be release in 2021.
