Field of Light at Sensorio
Bruce Munro best work right in the heart of California
Paso Robles’s main attraction is its wine. However, Bruce Munro’s “Field of Light” installation changes it. It transforms a section of rolling hills into a sensory experience. The first thing I noticed is how casually flat the entrance was, and then immediately after you enter the ticketing area and go beyond the bathrooms and bar, the ground slopes presenting you with routes that split with some going up and others going down. As you move in, you are slowly surrounded by the stems and balls that make up the lights. They behave like grass flowing around trees. Because the hills have overlapping humps, it was difficult to see the edge or where the field ends.
My advice is to purchase the earlier spots that allow you to experience the sunset as well as the lights afterward.
As the sunset approaches, the lights on the ground come alive. There’s a moment where the sky is just dark enough that allows you to see both the sunset and the lights with faint colors at the same time. It is easy to get lost, but since the installation isn’t exceptionally (it's no bigger than a football field), you can let yourself get lost within it.
When it is full dark, that’s when all the colors in the field come alive. The colors of each bulb are not the same as the next as the color of the lights are mixing in with its surrounding bulbs. But you can tell that they are zoned and continuously changing.
Everything good in this world is temporary (impermanence). Sadly this installation is the same. See it before the installation end in Dec 2021 (link below).
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