Lighting designer Aron Altmark is the featured artist in the TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show for February, enabling visitors to create light-based graffiti on the side of a UHaul at the City Arts Factory as a part of its monthly Third Thursdays event. It will be a more compact version of this.TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show
Date: February 18, 2010
Time: 6pm-9pm
Location: City Arts Factory | 29 South Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL
Map: http://j.mp/cityartsfactoryMAP
Parking: Parking garage in the Plaza building on Orange Ave (entrance is on Church Street) or the parking garage across from the downtown public library on Central Ave.
PROJECT STATEMENT:
My inspiration for the laser graffiti project came from the Graffiti Research Labs L.A.S.E.R. Tag website. Theo Jansen, the creator of the software, has been working on this for several years now over in Europe, but I haven’t seen anything like it done in the United States recently. For me, I think the appeal of the Laser Graffiti project lies in its purity. Projects like this one, where the participants are more artisans than audience members, are truly beautiful to me. The L.A.S.E.R. Tag project in Vienna became a social and political forum for people to showcase their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on a massive scale—and that is really what drives me to draw inspiration from what they have done and put it in my back yard. This is a method of self-expression and artistic freedom that doesn’t harm anything, is fairly environmentally friendly, completely erasable, and can be showcased wherever there is a surface, a power source, and people to participate.
ARTIST BIO:
An Alabama native, Aron grew up in Birmingham, AL and gained his artistic training from the Alabama School of Fine Arts before moving to Orlando to continue his search for enlightenment. Currently, Aron is a freelance lighting designer for theatre, dance, concerts, and various other applications, as well as an electrician and technician in lighting. In addition to attending the University of Central Florida, he is a budding projectionist and light artist, which is where this Laser Graffiti project stems from. Aron describes his passion with: “I love light. I grew up with photography, so I learned how light surrounds us, how it affects and engulfs everything around us. I love being able to manipulate it and use it as my paintbrush—and I’m learning more every day."