Help Create The First ART- BREAK LIGHT SHOW for June 3rd’s GLOWFEST

ArtBreak 36 is BRIGHTER! than ever with special Light It Up! activities the whole family can create for the first ArtBreak Light Show. Come out to the Shreveport Convention Center Friday-Sunday, May 13-15, pick up a FREE ArtBreak “Bridge Coloring Book,” and color the three light conversion that you want to see light up the Texas Street Bridge during GlowFest on June 3rd.

“The Bakowski Bridge of Lights” debuted with a spectacular celebration of fireworks, music, and revelry on the Texas Street Bridge on “Twosday,” February 22, 2022. With the flip of a switch, a sensational palette of LED light, art, color, and creativity illuminated the sky above and reflected on the surface of the Red River below.

Broadway lighting designer Jason Lyons, who created the lighting for Rock of Ages and Bring It On: The Musical, is SRAC’s 2022 Resident Artist and the genius behind the creativity of the lighting of the bridge. But Lyons isn’t lighting the bridge alone. In September 2021, he and a team of local artists including John Lomax, James Marks, Mimi Webb, and Austin Jennings instructing three hundred students from Caddo Parish Title 1 elementary and high schools, along with students from the VOA Lighthouse after school program, Bossier Parish Community College, and Southern University Shreveport in a special S.T.E.A.M. arts education program hosted by SciPort. A team of local artists

Curriculum specialists Jennifer Johnson and Judy Smithson from SciPort and Ash Anders, Shreveport Regional Arts Council are overseeing the program. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts matched by the City of Shreveport and with the generosity of the Powers Foundation, Union Pacific and Community Network Inc. and the Alta and John Franks Foundation are providing the funding to make this program possible.

The 300 design lighting students met twice a month for three months, and in November were given a choice to opt out of the program or test their artistic and technical abilities to move forward as a smaller group of 80 students. These 80 students have continued to meet at SciPort once a week to hone their lighting design, coding, and programming skills and to become lighting design certified.

In April, the remaining 80 students will test further to compete to become one of an elite group of 35-50 student lighting designers whose designs will illuminate the Bakowski Bridge every night for seven consecutive nights and be featured on the Texas Street Bridge website.

During ArtBreak, a special Master Class conducted by Jason Lyons will be available to all 5 th grade through High School students who have participated in any phase of Lyon’s educational residency. Any student will be allowed to return to the LIGHT IT UP! project to see the light shows that have been developed, learn what the continuing 80 lighting certified design students have accomplished, and participate in the design process for the ArtBreak LIGHT SHOW that will debut on the Texas Street Bridge later in May.

Your family’s light can also shine on the bridge during GlowFest on June 3rd. Head to the Shreveport Convention Center Friday, May 13 to Sunday to May 15. Color your lights in the ArtBreak Light It Up! FREE Bridge Coloring Book, then bring the coloring book to GlowFest on June 3 rd to see your family’s personalized Light It Up! display on the “Bakowski Bridge of Lights” on the Texas Street Bridge.

A $1M donation from Dr. and Mrs. George Bakowski is in large part the reason that 13,000 LEDs are now nightly interactively illuminating 2,982 feet of what opened in 1934 as the Long/Allen Bridge. Funding for the lighting of the bridge has also been provided from the Red River Waterway Commission, the Louisiana Public Service Commission, the Shreveport Downtown Development Authority, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Will Atkins. The new interactive LED lighting heralds a transformational era of urban design pairing artists with technology experts to harness the power of artful lighting that is being used in cities across the world including Dubai, London, Singapore, and San Francisco. It is transforming the cityscapes of Shreveport/Bossier City and uniting the communities and their economies, like nothing has before.

Create a Design!

All weekend artists will program YOUR Family Design! 1st Floor Lobby “Light It Up!”

See your design light Up at the Glo Fest - FREE Friday, June 3 at the Riverview Ampitheatre.