A performer during Urban Light Works’ final event at the Turning Basin in 2003 (Photo courtesy Linda Voreland)
Urban Light Works, in a descriptive manifesto, declared itself as “young and ambitious. It is the goal of the organization to become the leading force of contemporary public art in the world. We give public spaces and abandoned areas life, marginalized communities a voice, artists a forum, and the general public a fun place to be.”
Formally, ULW began in 1998 as an interdisciplinary class in Virginia Commonwealth University’s kinetic imaging department. The instructor was Linda Voreland, a Norwegian and a then-recent Fulbright scholar who earned an MFA in media arts from Northern Illinois University.
During four Decembers, as an ostensible companion to the Grand Illumination at the James Center, ULW became a production company open to all VCU arts instructors and students. The two-day events spread along several football fields of space amid the “Spaghetti Works” of Shockoe near 17th and Main streets. The industrial forest canopy of metal train trestles (including the renowned Triple Crossing) and concrete columns supporting the grand curves of highway overpasses became screens for animations and short films.
Prior to her arrival, Voreland didn’t know anything about VCU or Richmond.
She worked as a producer for Norwegian television, but her guiding interest took her to disparate and often impoverished places to introduce media and communications to women and young people.
Speaking by video from her home in Kristiansand, Norway, Voreland explains, “[ULW] was a very organic organization. We said, ‘This year we want to do this and that,’ and we went out and did it. Following a business plan goes against every bone in my body. In the real world, though, you need that. Allison was instrumental in accomplishing that.”
Allison P. Andrews at the time recruited out-of-state art students for VCU. She became acquainted with Voreland and one day, almost offhandedly, she told her about “showing some projections down at the Spaghetti Works.”
John Malinoski’s program from that final event (Image courtesy Amie Oliver)
Voreland knew of the Spaghetti Works because of her friendship with VCU professor and graphic designer John Malinoski. He proved an able guide. For a year, she explored Richmond’s alleys, taking in the sights and listening to stories.
Voreland, through Malinoski, forged a connection with then-17th Street Farmer’s Market Director Kathy Emerson, who was eager to add flair to celebrations like the Grand Illumination. And on a sharp cold night in 1999, ULW produced its first event. Wearing white jumpsuits, Rob Carter and Sandy Wheeler from VCU graphic design ascended the trestle using their rock-climbing gear. A troupe of older men playing tubas wandered among the gathered curious. Art students paraded while wearing illuminated outfits, and video and animation projections covered warehouse walls and filled highway support columns.
“I don’t think people knew what it was,” Voreland muses. “They didn’t know what to do with it. We had no regulations or managers to say we couldn’t. And everybody had fun. Everybody was laughing.”
The production came with an immense amount of work that Voreland didn’t feel up to repeating. Andrews, however, wanted ULW to continue. That meant securing nonprofit status, identifying funders and coordinating with officials.
The next year, Spaghetti Works 2000 drew a crowd of more than 5,000 people, presented more than 200 bodies of work and featured a five-block-long bucket drum orchestra. 64 magazine described it as a “21st century version of a ‘happening,’ a borderless gallery and a postmodern circus turned into a cultural exchange.”
ULW soon received invitations to enliven special events.
For a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts capital campaign gala, in conjunction with celebrated art patron Pam Reynolds, 56 artists created performance pieces in almost every room. VCU fashion design professor Kristin Caskey’s costumes made performers into living statuary.
The group produced an event for the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station that featured balloons carrying cameras that beamed images to ULWers wearing monitors on their chests. “This was before drones and Wi-Fi,” Voreland recalls. “We were in this crazy time between analog and digital. Oh, I get exhausted just remembering everything we did.”
Raising funds proved wearying. “We didn’t know how to ask for money or for how much,” Andrews says.
Urban Light Works’ first event in 1999 featured, among other things, Rob Carter and Sandy Wheeler rappelling under the Spaghetti Works after the Grand Illumination. (Photo courtesy Linda Voreland)
Ukrop loaned the former Commonwealth Printers shop (now Charm School ice cream) to serve as a ULW headquarters.
ULW’s grand finale occurred at the turning basin from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, 2003, and included a dance-fashion show of students working with Chicago artist Nick Cave, maker of flamboyant wearable art called “Soundsuits” (one is in the VMFA collection); a 15-foot sculpture baked in a fabricated kiln; the choreography of Julia Mayo and Dim Sum Dance; the music of Native American drummers, banjoist Curtis Eller, Tulsa Drone and Blue Line Highway; and the poetic performance art of the Nine Men, visiting courtesy of the Norwegian government.
The festivities annoyed authorities monitoring the canal and led to the impoundment of a canoe and a near-arrest when a female performer dressed as a bride tossed the world — as a painted beach ball — into the basin, the waters of which the ULW mischief makers were forbidden to breach.
“I don’t think people knew what it was. They didn’t know what to do with it. We had no regulations or managers to say we couldn’t. And everybody had fun. Everybody was laughing.” —Linda Voreland
Andrews adds, “We lost our steam and we were burned out.”
“There was nothing quite like it,” Malinoski reflects. “And it seems that conditions favored it happening only in that unique moment.”
Besides memories, what survives as testimony to ULW’s existence are Malinoski’s striking poster and program designs, some videos and scattered pictures. Unfortunately, many images of ULW were documented by slides that were destroyed by a flood.
Voreland is now the co-operator of a bar and performance space. She recalls how well she and the ULW students worked together. “We made a special bond, that batch of students,” she says, “and many of them are still friends today.”
