Shine A Light

While working on the concept for my 2018 series Shine A Light When It’s Gray Out, I was influenced, as most artists are, by the ever-shifting topography of society, political and moral. Over the last few years, most jarring to me have been events like mass shootings and violence in schools, and the fake news phenomenon. Egged on by social media—oddly, for many, now more important than reality, or natural disasters—it seems that only after a national tragedy do we, as a society, talk about helping each other, or embrace change. Über-consumed by the tedium of micromanaging, we slog through the day. The macro, meanwhile, is often too big a picture for us to wrap our collective head around, so individuals retreat—isolated in a virtual world. Like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we cave. We give up hope, sequestered safely under a rock.

In contrast, while Shine A Light When It’s Gray Out cocooned over the course of a year, I experienced three very positive forces. Each distinct and separate, metamorphosed my perspective on world events and my own life. And, as a result, this series fledged.

A tour de force that inspired Shine A Light When It’s Gray Out was the musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Through the auteur’s use of hip-hop, rap, and traditional musicals the triple-threat composer-lyricist-playwright flipped the switch on the Broadway script. At first viewing, my senses were bombarded. During multiple re-plays of the soundtrack— songs of love, loss, ambition, hope—I savored its nuanced truths. Themes stuck in my craw, specifically: how do you create a place for yourself in this world without sacrificing something? How do we deal with loss, through anger or love? What will we leave behind when we are gone? How do we not give up hope? The lyrics of “Wrote My Way Out” and “It’s Quiet Uptown” helped—mentally and emotionally—to impel my new series to coalesce. My title and several of the works that comprise my series were in many ways inspired by Miranda’s life force expressed in his storytelling.