In mid-May 2014, a new documentary film about the Bay Bridge Lights art installation premieres at Oakland, California’s Grand Lake Theatre; it will also screen at BlueLight Cinemas in Cupertino, California.
Leo Villareal (born 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American artist living and working in New York City. His work combines LED lights and encoded computer programming to create illuminated displays.
The Bay Lights was conceived by Ben Davis of Words Pictures Ideas, a public relations company that has a contract with the California Department of Transportation for publicizing the construction of the new span of the Bay Bridge between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. Davis characterized the Bay Bridge as being overshadowed by the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a popular tourist destination for visitors to San Francisco, and he hoped this public art project would give it more recognition.
“Impossible Light,” by first-time San Francisco filmmaker Jeremy Ambers, follows artist Leo Villareal and Ben Davis through their three-year journey to complete the monumental public art project and the world’s largest LED light sculpture — 25,000 lights sparkle every evening in ever-changing patterns on the cables of the Bay Bridge’s western span.
