GLOW Santa Monica

I went to the GLOW event yesterday in Santa Monica with some friends and took some pictures with my point-and-shoot.  The event was a free after-dark art event, with pieces by various artists and groups scattered all up and down the beach in Santa Monica.  This was the second such event.  Apparently the first one attracted such a huge crowd that it become unwieldy.  This time they focused more on art than on music.  There were some amazing pieces.  There were also some that were not so successful but it was interesting to see the attempts to work in a challenging environment: outdoors, at night, with unknown wind and temperature conditions.  The organizers lucked out because the weather was gorgeous.  It's been a very cool summer in Los Angeles but this weekend was hot, sunny with a beautiful warm evening, no fog, no wind. 

The best art pieces were the ones that allowed for some level of audience interaction, that really took advantage of the darkness, and that created an interesting space for that interaction.  One artist was having some challenges working with a fog machine. Others used black light and phosphoresence to take advantage of the darkness. Some pieces didn't embrace the glow theme at all and so didn't seem to fit very well.

I took some pictures with my little camera.  All of these are without flash since it would totally kill the effect of the art pieces.  Handheld and long exposures means these are slightly blurry with some light trails and unexpected effects, but it was a lot of fun to see what would happen.

We headed to Santa Monica early at 5p to beat the traffic, spending a couple of hours hanging out on the roof deck of the new Santa Monica Place Mall, overlooking the ocean.  Our trek started at 8p after full darkness.  At about 9:30, we hit Casa del Mar for a drink and dessert and to rest our weary feet.  We finished up at about 11:30.  The crowds at the event were all shapes and sizes-families with kids and babies, older people, young couples, groups of friends.  Some people had prepared for the event by creating glowing things to wear-horn shaped headdress, lighted jacket.  They were also selling glow rings and other glowing things so the audience ended up being part of the ambiance.

The event went on until 3a and I'm sure the late night crowd looked really different from the early one, but I thought this was an amazing and very successful event.