Five colorful pop-up creatures — POPO, POPUP, POPLI, POPETTE and POPOTIN — emerging from boxes have taken up residence in Kennedy Plaza from Feb. 1 to 17. This light-up, interactive installation is a piece in the second annual Lumina Festival.
The Lumina Festival, organized by the Downtown Providence Park Network, features performances and art exhibits “centered around illumination,” according to the festival’s website. Unlike last year’s festival, Lumina is highlighting local artists through seven pieces of art scattered throughout downtown Providence.
Nora Barré, executive director of the Downtown Providence Park Network, hopes that Lumina will “move towards 100% local art” in the future to support Providence artists.
Starting Friday, Biltmore Park will host a weekend of musical performances, food trucks and dance productions. One such event is Gather Farm’s “Sugar on Snow,” where participants can taste maple syrup taffy — a “sweet” tradition that stems from local Indigenous people, Barré said.
The nonprofit chose to host Lumina at Kennedy Plaza due to the “thousands of riders a day” that pass through the plaza, she explained. She added that the Downtown Providence Park Network partnered with Rhode Island Public Transit to create a selfie station at Kennedy Plaza and a graphic that reads “Next Stop: Lumina.”
One local artist featured in this year’s festival is Jessica Ricci, an artist and jewelry designer. Her glass sculpture titled “The Eye of Providence” is displayed downtown in Symposium Books. Ricci said she used lace to create layers within the piece, and her husband, glassblower Benjamin Giguere, crafted the eye itself.
“I wanted the eye to be a monument to our city — a city that welcomed my people as immigrants,” Ricci, who is of Italian heritage, wrote in a message to The Herald. Ricci and her husband share a desire to “bring light to where there’s darkness,” which they felt coincided with the mission of Lumina.
Another piece of local art by artist Max Van Lorimer is located in a vacant storefront on Eddy Street. The installation, titled “The Chromatic Visitor,” features boxes of acrylic light gels illuminated by colorful backlights.
Van Lorimer moved to Providence just 10 months prior to applying to Lumina.
“It’s a great honor and a huge sign of encouragement, and maybe the thing I’m most proud of in my life,” Van Lorimer said.
Through his art, he hopes to encourage viewers to consider the “forms of care and nourishment that beings need” and “what we can do to care for each other right now.”
Downtown Providence Park Network works to “convene partners, steward spaces and activate and bring vibrancy to the public spaces” of Providence, Barré said.
The name of the festival, “Lumina,” comes from the Latin word for light. “It’s the darkest half of the year, and people want to stay inside,” Barré said. “In the middle of winter, we wanted to bring the community together.”
Tom Mason, a Providence resident of six years, wasn’t aware of the festival when it happened last year. Now that the festival has expanded, he said he is “amazed by the city itself, how it embraces all of this.”
“It’s nice to have things out here that’ll bring a smile,” he added.
