Multilingual typographic sculptures for the night

Technologist Joe O’Connell and sculptor Blessing Hancock are a team with brilliant ideas. Their latest lantern-like engaging art placed throughout the plaza between the Palo Alto Main Library and Arts Center in Palo Alto, California is just one of them. The duo, who have previously collaborated on similar public art works, are the talk of the town having created Brilliance, a series of sculptures made up of multilingual phrases collected from the community, cut out of steel and welded together in three-dimensional lantern-like forms that truly come to life after dark. Colorful LED lights illuminate the installations from within, casting a brilliant glow while projecting silhouetted shadows of the cut-out phrases. Viewers can change the color of the light emitted from the multicultural sculptures by touching sensors on the steel frames, making Brilliance an interacting piece of art and typography when the night comes.