Portland Winter Light Festival: Lights, people, action

Published 12:00 am Monday, January 31, 2022

Bigger and better than ever, the Portland Winter Light Festival will feature more than 100 works of art at locations throughout the metro area.

The large creations have lit up the city in some dark moments — literally — in the past several years, and they remain impressive work deserving of attention.

The event has been expanded to nine days and eight nights, Feb. 4-12, meaning visitors can enjoy the lights on two weekends (Feb. 5-6, 11-12). Pioneer Courthouse Square, the World Trade Center and Electric Blocks at Southeast Second Avenue and Clay Street will be “anchor” locations for the festival, where lights will be displayed both weekends (6-10 p.m.), and other locations also feature lights, including Tigard, Lake Oswego, Milwaukie and Hayden Island.

The anchor locations feature dynamic, large-scale artworks, music and food carts.

A map of locations is available on the Portland Winter Light Festival website, http://www.pdxwlf.com.

Said Portland Winter Light Festival Executive Director Alisha Sullivan. “We are incredibly proud to be one of the very few activities that provided free, in-person opportunities to safely interact with art in 2020 and 2021, and we look forward to doing so again in 2022.”

The festival, founded by the Willamette Light Bridage and sponsored by PGE and others, has a “decentralized footprint,” meaning there’ll be plenty of space for people to move around and enjoy the lights.

The 2022 theme is “Within the Ecosystem,” and some highlights are:

• The return of “Helianthus Enorme” by Fez BeGaetz, a 25-foot-tall sunflower with 3,500 pixels of programmable LEDs.

• Large-scale building projections by lighting art Mark Johns and Craig Winslow.

• Participation from students at Leodis V. McDaniel High School, Skyline K-8, Portland State University, University of Oregon, and local children from the Lents neighborhood.

• “Virror,” a 6-foot-tall LED wall with a 3-D scanning sensor that acts as a “virtual mirror.”

• “Bioluminescent Beasts,” a light-reactive installation by popular local artist Mike Bennett.

• “Green Fuse,” a multimedia art experience from CymaSpace combining music and sound responsive LED light strips to benefit both deaf and hearing people.

• An illuminated bike ride, roller disco night, four evenings of silent disco dances and much more.

• In addition, for the entire month of February, there’ll be a visiting attraction on the Willamette River — Luna, a 24-foot-long orca whale covered in 6,000 environmentally friendly LED bulbs. It’s designed by lighting experts MK Illumination and is on loan from the Lumiere Vancouver (Canada) winter light festival.