Artist aims to show Landscape Arboretum in a new light

The earlier sunsets resulting from the end of daylight saving time are a reminder of the long winter nights ahead of us. But the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum hopes to provide a light-filled alternative beginning this week.

British artist Bruce Munro is transforming the gardens, using miles of fiber-optic cable and thousands of lights.

Munro's journey to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum began, in many ways, in 1984. He lived in Sydney, Australia, at the time. One day something in a store window caught his eye — and changed his life.

"It was a plastic extrusion that was irradiated with ultraviolet light and that glowed," he said, speaking from his studio in Wiltshire, England. "Every time I walked past that window I kept on thinking, 'God, I could make stuff with that.'"

A painter and sculptor by training, he launched a business making light-infused custom store displays. After several years he and his wife decided to return to the U.K. They took one last tour of Australia, a trip that led them to Uluru, the gigantic geological formation once known as Ayers Rock. Munro said the light playing on the surface of Uluru was spectacular.

"And I had one of these sort of moments of clarity," he said. "The rock itself, it made me feel very connected with the place."

He tried to capture the experience in his notebook. That, in time, became his first installation: "Field of Light." He planted 10,000 lights, mounted on stalks, in a field near his home in England. They produced a mesmerizing effect, swaying in the breeze after dark.

"Gradually people heard about it and they would sort of turn up and have a look," Munro said. "And it was during that installation I learned that actually people could be moved by artwork, particularly if the inspiration came from a genuine experience."

Since then he's mounted exhibits all over the U.K. and the United States. A version of "Field of Light," called "Oreum," will be displayed at the arboretum.

"In the area close to the buildings at the arboretum, I think there are five or six thousand vertical stems, which are illuminated by fiber optic," he said. "And on the top you've got this little windmill diffuser."

The windmills are designed to mitigate the impact of winter winds and perhaps blow away any snow accumulations. "Winter Light" will run through April. This is the first show Munro has designed to survive Midwestern cold.

"The exterior pieces we have tried to create so that they will be aesthetically beautiful in a snowscape," he said. "So I am hoping we are going to get a really unique experience."

In all, there are 13 works in "Winter Light," some of them indoors.

One outdoor piece is called "The Good Seed." It's inspired by C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia." An enduring image from the first book, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," is of a lamp post in falling snow in the middle of a forest. A later book reveals the lamp post was actually growing. That inspired a question in Munro's mind.

"It was just my imagination, wondering what the seed of a lamp post looks like," he said.

The result is a giant dandelion seed made of lamp posts.

Arboretum Director Peter Moe first saw Munro's work at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. He immediately saw the possibilities of bringing Munro to Minnesota.

"The scale of it is amazing," he said. "You know these aren't small exhibits. They are expansive and so they really just bring you into the landscape."

Usually the arboretum is closed after dark, but visitors will be able to purchase time-specific tickets for "Winter Light" and view the spectacle until 9 p.m.

"People are starved for light in the winter," Moe said. "I mean, we're Minnesotans. We can tolerate the low temperatures. But when it gets dark at 4:30 and doesn't get light until 7:30 in the morning, it's hard on all of us. So I think we will be selling out many nights of this exhibit."

"Winter Light" opens to the public Saturday. Munro hopes the show will bring some joy, particularly post-election.

"I know that people will be feeling probably fairly tired and down in the dumps about all the stress and pressures of the election, and I hope this raises their spirits a bit," he said.

And he hopes there will be snow, sometime, around "The Good Seed." Minnesota, he said, is as near as he will get to doing a Narnian piece in a Narnian landscape.