Like many of us emerging from the cocoon of COVID-19, Leo Villareal is feeling reborn. He’s asking, What’s next? For himself. For art. For the world. It’s been a pretty wild ride so far. Personally, he’s just come off an intense 10-year run of making monumental-scale public art that has propelled him to the very pinnacle of the international art world.
Consider “The Bay Lights,” which was conceived back in 2011 as a way to honor the 75th birthday of the bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland. Nearly two miles of the bridge is lit up by 25,000 individually programmable LEDs that Villareal has orchestrated into a nightly light show: an ever-changing work of art which is seen by millions of people
