Leo Villareal Public Art Installation Illuminates Downtown with Sky

TAMPA, FL.- New York-based digital light artist Leo Villareal’s recent completion of Sky (Tampa) on the south façade of the new Tampa Museum of Art features a dramatic 12,000-square-foot public art commission that illuminates the downtown core.

The exterior of the new museum features programmable LED lights, 45 feet high and 300 feet long, embedded within two-layers of perforated aluminum panels. In daylight, the museum’s façade creates a moiré-like pattern, and in darkness the LED light installation glows with Villarreal’s signature light-coded and hypnotic dance.

Sky (Tampa) showcases movement and light; a sequencing of patterns created by Villareal’s custom coded software that emerge as a whole and result in random templates of flash, fade, trail and color. The matrix of 144 four-foot light emitting diode illuminators and 28 Inablers display a visual language of non-repeating patterns. 
  
“We were committed to the incorporation of a permanent public art component as part of the new museum,” said Todd D. Smith, the museum’s executive director. “LED lights were always a part of the overall design of the museum’s architect, Stanley Saitowitz. It was vitally important to commission an artist who understood the importance of the relationship between the museum’s new structure, the landscape, and the public realm. Leo is one of the pioneers in utilizing light media within the context of architecture. We could not think of a more appropriate artist to significantly enhance the museum and engage the public than Leo Villareal.”