Breathing Lights uses public art to highlight blight problem in upstate New York At a time when home lighting often draw outsized attention?the more garish the holiday display, the better?an art project illuminating empty homes in upstate New York has shown the quiet power of lighting up streets that often go ignored.
Breathing Lights, an art installation in New York?s capital region, illuminates abandoned building with a soft glow that waxes and wanes, suggesting the rhythms of breath and human activity.
Conceived of by artist and University at Albany professor Adam Frelin and architect Barbara Nelson, the project, the beneficiary of a $1.2 million grant from the Bloomberg Foundation?s Public Art Challenge, turns vacant homes into lanterns that draw attention to the problem of abandoned properties and blight. ?It?s a really beautiful thing in a place where you may not expect a beautiful thing,? says Nelson.

The issue of abandoned property in the region is a constant, according to Nelson, who leads a local architecture firm and non-profit community design center. It?s both a continual source of work for her colleagues as well as a detriment to the quality of life in the community.
Like many formerly industrialized cities in the Rust Belt, the communities that played host to the Breathing Lights displays?Albany, Troy, and Schenectady?are dotted with hundreds of blighted homes, symbols of the region?s economic challenges. From 1970 to 2000, as manufa...