When Aurora: Illuminating the Holiday Magic of Mellon Square debuts Nov. 23 on Pittsburgh’s Light Up Night, it will not only dazzle visitors but also mark new ventures for all involved in its creation.
It’s the first major outdoor public art project for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Mellon Square normally closes in cold weather, but this new attraction will keep it open. And the selected artist, Joshua Challen Ice, has achieved his personal goal of a designing a large-scale project.
Alana Wenk, director of advancement for the conservancy, said discussions about the project began in the summer. “It was a wonderful opportunity for us,” she said. “Mellon Square closes for winter and reopens in spring. This new attraction will keep the park open and create sense of vibrancy and festive cheer during the holiday season.”
Here’s how Aurora will work: It features hundreds of diamond-shaped panels, which shift their hues as they catch the breeze or respond to the touch of passersby. Arranged in an argyle pattern, the panels reflect the terrazzo design of the park and will lift off and float in the air, according to a conservancy news release. Supported by a gently undulating truss structure, the panels form a flowing ribbon that will arc above the park. It can rise and dip, bouncing across pathways, stretching over the central fountain, and weaving through trees and gathering spaces there. At its peak, it will soar more than 25 feet. Lights hidden around the perimeter of the park will illuminate it from different angles.
Mellon Square, initially constructed in 1955 as the first public space built over a parking garage, underwent a complete restoration in 2014. Two foundations are supporting the Aurora installation. Wenk said Eden Hall Foundation gave the conservancy a $175,000 grant, and other funds came from a total Benter Foundation grant of $422,000 this year earmarked to support activities in Mellon Square and enliven Downtown. Additional support comes from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, according to the conservancy website.
Ice, a Point Park University graduate in lighting design who worked at the Mattress Factory for seven years as an installer and exhibitions manager, is listed on Shiftworks Community + Public Arts’ directory of artists. The local nonprofit that curates large public art displays across southwestern Pennsylvania served as project manager for Aurora and collaborated on the design with the conservancy, the city and Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, according to an article in NEXTPittsburgh.
The 29-year-old submitted his proposal, and after a second interview in mid-August he was selected for the project. He has worked alone on the design, while event production company Flyspace fabricated the panels and built the installation in its North Side studio. Ice said that includes aluminum trusses similar to what would be used on a stage. The trusses had to undergo engineering approval to make sure they will stand up correctly.
During the day the piece will look mostly white, Ice said, with the shadows of the day, resembling the wind, and if the weather is overcast determining the amount of color passersby will see. The lights will be on a timer for the start of the show. “It will react in color flow to the sunset. It will play off the time of day,” he said.
After Ice left his Mattress Factory position, where he started as an intern upon the recommendation of his Point Park lighting design professor, Stephanie Mayer Staley, he found success in gallery shows and short-term public art projects. His outdoor sculptural lighting installation work has been featured in Pittsburgh Cultural Trust gallery crawls, according to his website. He attended a technology summer session at the Royal Danish Academy’s School of Architecture, the only artist in the room. And he has completed artist residencies and displayed work in New York, Indiana, Memphis, Erie and Cleveland.
He works out of a Squirrel Hill studio with six other artists, a space that used to be a parking garage, where he does a great deal of woodworking and welding. Some of his work is available for sale via his website.
Ice’s inspiration for the project came from the park’s original design, the midcentury feel of it, he said, with all its silhouettes and shapes. “I could imagine the architecture blowing away in the wind, like leaves,” he said. “It would lift the floor off the ground and be taken away by the wind. So the panels will spin and blow away the leaves or the terrazzo tile.”
His creative design was driven by nature, he said, too. “[There’s a] phenomenon in nature that creates color in light, and the undulating structure ahead can float away into the sky. It kind of felt appropriate to that. I was thinking of a backdrop to all of this being the sky. How the sky is the contrast to the color, blending in with the sky itself as it raises up.”
Signage will be erected to explain how the installation works, he said, but people will be encouraged to touch Aurora, with portions low enough to then turn.
Ice said that the conservancy, Shiftworks and Flyspace has made all of this a very smooth process. The hope is that the panels will be remade into new shapes and sizes, and the trusses are rentable inventory. “I designed this with as much little waste as possible, [resulting] in different configurations as possible in the future,” he said.
The conservancy and its partners have planned additional holiday activities at the site for visitors, with heated igloos, a hot cocoa booth and “holi-sleighs,” according to the news release.
A schedule of Mellon Square live musical performances and holiday choirs has been posted on the conservancy website. Those include Cello Fury at 7 p.m. Nov. 26 and 27; Pittsburgh Festival Opera at 7 p.m. Nov. 30; an Aprés Tea Happy from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 30; Duke Ellington’s “Jazz Nutcracker” performed by the Adam Lee Morgan Tribute Orchestra, a 17-piece big band, at 6 and 8 p.m. Dec. 21; and Pastor Deryk Tines Gospel Singers at a December date yet to be scheduled.
Information and schedule updates will be posted on the conservancy website: https://pittsburghparks.org/msq/#episode-three.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.