A new light art installation that’s activated by sound is now up on the gazebo at Plaza Park, a colorful and innovative installation by local couple Gregg and Greta Schoenberg.
The art piece, called Soundstage, will be up through mid-March and includes several weekends of free dance events where people are welcome to join others and dance to the music and light.
“What we’ve done is installed a multi-colored LED light piece in the gazebo in the Plaza and the main idea behind it is each of the six columns that supports the gazebo is actually rigged with sound activated LED lights. So when people talk, when people play music, or when cars drive by, the lights react to sound and when there’s no sound they’re dark. In addition to that to create ambiance within the piece, we did a non-sound activated strand, a rainbow pattern of LED lights on the top of the gazebo,” said Gregg Schoenberg.
The piece has a total of around 850 individual LED lights and the project is made possible in part by a grant from the Healdsburg Tourism Improvement District.
“The inspiration for the piece came from a couple places. The lights were something we had started to play with in very small scale, rigging them to bikes and doing bike rides with some music and then last year when Jessica Martin curated and oversaw the Illuminations exhibit that was happening all throughout town where different artists were coming in and installing light pieces during winter last year,” Schoenberg said. “We really appreciate that it brought people out during a slow time of year, during the winter and during the depths of COVID. It brightened the experience of being here and it brought people out to walk at night and see local art and that was the big inspiration, to do something that would bring people out and especially with doing it in the gazebo, we really wanted to give the community a place to gather.”
He said it’s a fun project and part of the magic behind it is the sound reactivity. As part of the installation, he and Greta will be going out to the Plaza on Saturday’s and will play music. Schoenberg brings a portable DJ setup and they have a little party that syncs with the lights.
“We encourage families and kids to come out and just have fun and explore the space together. At the end of the day that’s what it’s really all about, bringing community out there to safely gather and have some fun together,” he said.
Musical light experiences will take place Feb. 19, March 5 and 12 from 6 to 8 p.m.
The Schoenberg’s don’t normally work with light art, however, they’re both passionate about public art and the visual arts.
“This is new for us for sure. We’ve both been interested in public art. We moved to Healdsburg in 2020 after living for 20 years in the Mission District (in San Francisco). There was a lot of public art happening all the time. We’re both active in the arts, although we’re not particularly light artists ourselves,” said Greta Schoenberg.
Gregg Schoenberg is a volunteer for Lit Quake, which organizes literature crawls and the popular San Francisco Literary Festival. He’s helped the organization produce events for a number of years and also dabbles in writing and photography.
Greta is the founder of the San Francisco Dance Film Festival. “So I’ve worked in visual media for a long time, producing and curating film events and some live dance events. I’m a former professional dancer, so the dance element of the dance parties has become kind of an extra bonus for me and wanting to get people out and moving their bodies. It can be a very good way to connect people across boundaries and to bring people together,” she said.
The creative duo approached the city about their light project idea after brainstorming possible project ideas involving light with Jessica Martin.
“She encouraged us by showing us that there was a grant application online for public art work that we could apply for. So we went ahead and applied and in tandem began a conversation with the city community services department about using the gazebo,” Greta Schoenberg said.
Once they were awarded the grant, they collaborated with the city all the way through installation and project troubleshooting.
“They’ve been fantastic partners all the way through the project,” she said.
While their piece is a completely separate project from the pink lighted archway that was up for Valentine’s Day, Greta said they wanted to launch their project around the same time.
While the couple doesn’t have any additional projects in mind for the immediate future, Gregg Schoenberg said working with light is something they want to continue to explore.
“This is kind of like a trial run for us so I think we would like to continue on with this sort of thing in the future. Judging so far, the community reaction seems to be positive. People really seem to be enjoying it and appreciative of the fact that we’re giving them a place to enjoy music and light and dance,” he said.
He said expanding and continuing the concept into the future may be something they’re interested in.
Greta Schoenberg echoed his sentiment, “We’re definitely permanently passionate about public art and about community connection, connecting as a community in person. I think the community needs a little reminder of what it’s like to come together in person and what it’s like to dance together on a dance floor and meet new people.”
