A Little Light, Some Art, And A Lot Of Love In One LI Village

PATCHOGUE, NY — About three years ago the folks over at the Patchogue Arts Council were brainstorming, trying to come up with ideas for an event that would do well in the village.

Arts council Executive Director Beth Giacummo-Lachacz and the arts council's president Lori Devlin both had an interest in avant-garde contemporary art and media and had taken notice that light installation festivals had become popular all over the world, especially in European cities like Berlin in Germany, and Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

To them, the media seemed like an interesting pick for an event.

"We just love that and we wanted to see that happen here in Patchogue," said Giacummo-Lachacz. "So, we thought, ‘we can do this.’”

They began researching, and as it turned out, producing a high-tech show like a light festival is no easy task, but MoCA L.I.ights — the Musuem of Contemporary Art Long Island, the island’s only open-air museum — began to evolve anyway.

"It's not just something that we can together ourselves, and it requires extensive fundraising because the equipment is very expensive to rent, and then you have all the elements like the security that has to happen overnight, for the entire event."

There are also artists' commissions that have to be paid.

But the council has been lucky in attaining some large sponsors that have been "really supportive and excited about the event," Giacummo-Lachacz said, adding that the council has also been able to use grant money also.

The event is made possible by sponsors like Suffolk Count and its Office of Cultural Affairs, the Long Island Community Foundation, National Grid, and PSEG, as well as local businesses, and numerous community members.

Now while the arts council began planning three years ago for the event, they decided to bump up the installation when COVID-19 hit last year, so that residents and visitors alike would have something safe to do at a time when the marquee for the historic Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts was dark and other live music venues were shuttered.

Last December’s event ended up being a success, so the arts council decided to bring it back. But this time it will run for much longer.

MoCA Lights 2021: It Lights a Village is a three-part event that starts this Thursday with a guided tour — via an app — that can be walked from start to finish in the village and will run through Sunday.

For the festival, select buildings on Main Street will serve as the backdrop for a moving light display that has been created by a group of local and international artists. The facades of well-known landmarks such as the arts council’s headquarters on Terry Street, as well as the U.S. Post Office, the United Methodist Church, the old courthouse, Carnegie Library, and 44 West Main Street, which used to be the bridal shop, will all feature curated displays.

The Patchogue- Medford Library, which gets a new mural each year will have an animated design for the first time this year.

The second part of the installation is the Patchogue Theatre’s “Art on the Marquee,” which will feature curated designs from artists on its marquee. The third part of this year’s installation is the “Night Visions Projected Gallery.” It includes the Roe Walkway Piazza and the last stop on the tour is the gallery at the Better Man Distillery.

“It’s easy to start or end up there,” Giacummo-Lachacz said of the distillery. “They have the longest run time.”

Depending on which night you're catching the night vision gallery and which location patrons are in, they can be watching a set of curated works for anywhere from 36 minutes up to over an hour. There are two curated works — the first from MoCA curatorial and the second is called Pandemic Projections 3.0, which is curated by a group from New Jersey called Wavelength.

The festival will run from 6 to 11 p.m. each night.

The council also has chosen their first “Glow Marshal” this year — Suffolk County Legis. Rob Calarco, who has been instrumental in securing cultural arts funding from the county for the arts council. He will preside over a special invite-only ceremony Thursday to honor the artists who have participated in the installation.

Unlike the four-day walkable tour, “Art on the Marquee” will continue nightly until the end of December.

Giacummo-Laschacz said it is hard for her to pick her favorite part of the event.

“My favorite part of the tour is the whole tour because creatively I get to work on this — it’s like my baby,” she said. “I really love working with …. no that's hard because I love each part.”

The projection mapping on the marquee is not done often on Long Island, so for her, it's really exciting to see it happen in Patchogue.

“It's really interesting to get to work with artists from all over the world, to kind of transform these buildings that I've essentially grown up with,” she said, adding that she grew up in the historic village. “So it's kind of cool to see these things transformed, you know.“

In the meantime, Giacummo-Laschacz is looking forward to continuing what has become a yearly tradition.

"It's very important to us to think about the entire village as the museum space and to take the artwork out of the lightbox gallery and bring it to Main Street,” said Giacummo-Laschacz, adding, “and really get people involved and sort of immersed in the experience of the work that.”

“That was really important to the whole idea of the event,” she said.