The Diamond City Partnership and Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University are proud to announce a new community event, SOMA Night Lights, on Friday, April 25 from 6 to 11 p.m. on the 100 block of South Main Street in Downtown Wilkes-Barre. This event is free and open to the public.
SOMA Night Lights, named for downtown Wilkes-Barre’s newly branded South Main Arts District (SOMA), will temporarily transform the district into a colorful canvas for the visual and performing arts. Working with artist Jeff Dubrow, SOMA Night Lights will feature several video-mapped projections on buildings throughout the district, including one compiled from community submissions. The video-mapping technique aligns video artwork to three-dimensional forms, using surfaces beyond flat screens to create immersive visuals.
In addition to the projections, the event will include a pop-up Kid’s Courtyard offering free crafts for children, live art demonstrations by artists, and open houses at participating SOMA galleries. Demonstrations for this event include the Rusty Iris led by Bad Hat Fire, Keystone College Mobile Glass Studio, and a community “graffiti bomb” led by Wilkes University alumna Paige Edwards.
The Rusty Iris is a school bus transformed into a double-decker, mobile sculpture, art exhibit and venue. Bad Hat Fire, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, describe themselves as “an eclectic group of hard-working, hard-playing people who share the love of fire and movement.” Located in the Sordoni Art Gallery parking lot (141 S. Main St.), there will be three fire performances at the Rusty Iris beginning at 7:30 p.m., 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
The Keystone College Mobile Glass Studio will offer live glass blowing demonstrations from 6 to 9 p.m. The Mobile Glass Studio, the only one of its kind in the region, is complete with its own glass furnace and all the component parts of a working glass studio. The Studio provides high school students with a unique opportunity to experience glass making. In addition to the artistic and aesthetic aspect of the process, students learn some of the chemistry and physics principles behind the heating and molding of raw materials used to make glass objects.
Paige Edwards is a NEPA-based artist specializing in illustration, graphic design, and mural work. A Wilkes University alumna, she has created several murals in the region including “At Wilkes, I Will” (rear 123 S. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre), “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds Tribute (116 S. Main St., Wilkes-Barre) and “The Grand Canyon” (342 Wyoming Ave., Kingston). She will be leading a community “graffiti bomb” where participants will be invited to spray paint a car that will be temporarily installed on the Wilkes University campus after the event.
Building on the success of 2021’s “Light the Way Forward,” SOMA Night Lights demonstrates the continued partnership between the Sordoni Art Gallery and Diamond City Partnership to engage both Downtown and campus communities. In 2021, “Light the Way Forward” transformed the University’s Weckesser Hall and showcased video-mapped projections by artist Jeff Debrow and music by Aboriginal artists. The dynamic display was synchronized with electronic music by Electric Fields, creating an immersive experience celebrating the inauguration of the University’s seventh president, Greg Cant.
To learn more about the SOMA Night Lights event, visit https://www.wilkes.edu/snl.