SAN ANTONIO, November 3, 2017 –– Land Heritage Institute (LHI) www.landheritageinstitute.org, in collaboration with EPIcenter www.epicenterus.org, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) www.lisc.org, and the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) www.landartgenerator.org have partnered to present the world’s first Solar Mural installation – public art that produces renewable energy. The Solar Mural artwork, La Monarca,will be unveiled at Luminaria, San Antonio’s 10thannual contemporary arts festival, held at Hemisfair on November 10, 2017. La Monarca’s final home will be at EPIcenter, and it will indeed generate clean energy.
La Monarca will be a spectacular, giant lotería card #24, which celebrates San Antonio’s status as the National Wildlife Federation’s first Monarch Butterfly Champion City.
The image, crafted by San Antonio artist Cruz Ortiz, is printed onto a special film produced by Sistine Solar. The film visually masks the standard dark blue solar cells, replacing them with the beautiful La Monarca image. The film allows light to pass through to the photovoltaic cells beneath and generate electricity.
There will be four panels stacked 2×2 at a vertical angle, measuring 6’6” wide by 11’ tall. Each panel stands at 66” x 40”.
Power from La Monarca will be stored throughout the day and then used to power the lights that will illuminate the artwork during the Luminaria Festival. Following the close of Luminaria, La Monarca will find a
permanent home inside a pollinator garden on the EPIcenter campus along the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River where it will generate solar energy for the facility.
“EPIcenter is a place committed to new energy innovation; we are excited to premiere the world’s first Solar Mural at Luminaria and look forward to enjoying this work of art – and the energy it will produce – at the EPIcenter campus,” said Kimberly M. Britton, Chief Executive Officer.
Partners hope that in the near future, Las Monarcas will be a swarm of Monarch Butterfly-inspired Land Art Generator artworks to be designed for placement at and to provide power to social service centers, municipal buildings, or eco-cultural tourism destinations throughout the City of San Antonio or other stops along Monarch Butterfly migration routes.
LHI will also be hosting the 5th biennial LHI Art-Sci Symposium in partnership with Luminaria in Southtown on Saturday, November 11, 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. at The Mercury Project (538 Roosevelt Avenue), free and open to the public. Symposium sessions, geared toward a general audience and fine for families with finesse, will focus on Sound Art & Sound Walks, Feminist Art in a Digital Age and reGEN: artists and scientists exploring regenerist practices and renewable energies. For a full agenda please see www.renewableart.org.
At Luminaria, La Monarca will appear atop a grassy knoll between two of the three historic 1960s-era “Confluence of Cultures” murals commissioned for the HemisFair ’68 World’s Fair: a stone mural by Juan O’Gorman and a glass tile mural by Carlos Mérida. Luminaria will take place Friday, November 10, 2017 from 7:00 pm to midnight at the Hemisfair campus in downtown San Antonio, TX. (NOTE: The grassy noll is between E. Market St. and the Convention Center.)
La Monarca has been a collaboration between Land Heritage Institute’s LHI Art-Sci Projects, EPIcenter, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and the Land Art Generator Initiative. Fabrication and technical support has been provided by OCI Solar Power, Mission Solar Energy, Sun Action Trackers, and Sistine Solar. The project has been made possible through support from EPIcenter and OCI Solar Power, the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Learn more at www.monarcas.org.
