Your showing-around of holiday guests and visiting tourists can be a little more festive this season with the Illuminate SF Festival of Light, underway now through New Year’s Day. The long winter nights are bedazzled with 35 light works in 12 San Francisco neighborhoods, and the festival offers events and guided tours, plus a list of self-guided tours by neighborhood.

While this is billed as a six-week festival of art, in reality many of these works are permanent and you’ve already seen them in your everyday walks about town. Others are in museums and would require paid admission to see. But there are some relatively new and really cool works of light art public parks or places as part of this celebration, and SFist would like to call your attention to these exceptional installations that are free and open to the public.





Trillian and Dodi

As noted earlier this month, the dynamite dodecahedronal sculptures Trillian and Dodi now sit splendidly at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley. These sculptures by the collective HYBOCOZO remain on display until November 2017.



Image: Aaron Muszalski via Flickr

Bayview Rise

If you’ve been around Bayview’s Pier 92 anytime recently, you’ve probably seen this animated, illuminated mural projected onto the side of a grain elevator. Created by Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan, Bayview Rise has been up since February 2014 and will remain until 2019.



Image: Future Cities Lab via Flickr

Murmur Wall

Hey, you know that LED sculpture outside the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that blinks seemingly random text messages? It’s called the Murmur Wall, you can actually submit your own messages and see them show up within a few seconds. This work by Future Cities Lab remains installed through May 2017.

Several permanent, non-seasonal works that are listed as part of the festival also deserve honorable mention, including the light-covered Volkswagen beetle Urban UFOs, Anima at Mission Bay, Monarch at Mission Bay, Language of the Birds in North Beach, Hand Signals in the Mission, Ethereal Bodies and Archipelago at Zuckerberg General Hospital, Skygarden at the SF Federal Building, Firefly at Civic Center, Constellation at the SF Public Library Main Branch, Coalesce at the SF Arts Commission Gallery, Caruso’s Dream in SoMa, Ocean Mirror With Fragments at UCSF Parnassus, and of course the Bay Lights on the west span of the Bay Bridge.

Additional works in the Festival of Light are on display at the SFMOMA, the Exploratorium, the deYoung Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the W Hotel, and the San Francisco International Airport.

Related: 'LightRail' LED Installation On Market Street Begins Raising Funds





