12th Annual Autumn Lights Festival
Gardens at Lake Merritt
Oakland
Oct. 12 – 14. 2023
“Ants ants ants ants ants ants ants ants ants ants ants…”
A small grove fitted with benches and strung with paper machè botanicals was emitting noises. That wasn’t the strange part. But I just needed to figure out what was the chanting of the ants, buzzing my head full of critters.
I found the culprit. It glowed along with its chirping, a small speaker embedded in the design and nearly imperceptible from the pockets of newsprint.
This was one of many pieces in the clearing-sized installation “SubQuercus” by artists Aimee Baldwin, Logan, and John Daniel, which in turn was a small part of an acres-wide swath of gardens at the edge of Lake Merritt in Oakland occupied by the 12th Annual Autumn Lights Festival last weekend. The event, a fundraiser for the themed Gardens at Lake Merritt, featured over 75 separate installations, ranging from the false-campfire-sized to a large lawn of glowing and pulsing inflatables.
No carwash dancing streamer-man, these inflatables were of another world.
AstroBotanicals, by Stan Clark, are huge inflatables in vaguely-plant-like forms illuminated by slowly cycling color-changing lights, this night arranged on a large swath of lawn. Some of them piped soothing but upbeat music. They’re available to rent, and while I’m sure the pricetag is hefty the installation is transformative — spatially and personally. They encouraged interaction, though I struggled to do much touching myself.
During my visit children ran between, shrieked, poked at, and hugged the pieces, while adults roamed lackadaisically between the forms or snuggled inside those with tent-like openings. I was reminded of the giant redwoods not far from here, some of which have been burned to the heartwood but still stand and grow, cavernous holes of fire damage large enough to fit a human hugged by strong sturdy trunks. The inflatables were a grove unto themselves, a environ within an environ, and I could imagine spending hours with them, if only I could find a cozy cove for myself.
Nearby, a shell of an elevator to nowhere stood, its panel of buttons a series of cryptic runes. Entitled “Lift Away” by Ellen Juhlin and Justin Oliphant, it also gently chimed when provoked, suggesting the use of a different button or, perhaps, impending doom.
Tired and achy but having seen perhaps half or two-thirds of the works on display, I was walking towards the exit when I was waylaid by a patch of dahlias. One lay face down, on the ground, drooped but untrammeled. The remainder stood tall, proud, and bright in a dark evening.
Maintained by the San Leandro Dahlia Society, it was densely planted with the small bushes and truly striking. Half a dozen or more colors and varieties, ranging from small and close-petaled, rounded and pom-pom-esque to huge, hand-sized and explosive, curling and twirling petals reaching for the night sky and the spotlights overhead. I spent nearly 20 minutes with them, crouched and cooing, photographing in the low light, doing my back not one favor. But for my brain and lenses, both ocular and mechanical, the discomfort is easily displaced by the images and memory of those burning orbs and their perfectly rounded cousins and their silk ribbons of flower flesh.
An annual three-night stint in the gardens at the lakeside seems like not enough to contain the works and delight of this light festival. Perhaps the fleeting nature (pun somewhat intended) of these installations makes them more precious or enjoyable, but I’d like to think that a more permanent display would keep me, and others, coming back for more sensory pleasures and secret finds, for I certainly did not come close to observing them all.
