A dense, forested landscape flush with pine trees and the occasional government building may seem like the last place you’d install an art exhibit, but Nicole Pollard says it’s perfect.

The co-curator of this year’s InLight exhibition thinks that when people experience art in unconventional places, away from standard museum spaces, “it can activate different histories, different stories, different relationships. It can increase access for people who may think that art galleries aren’t meant for them.”

Richmond’s annual InLight exhibition, sponsored by 1708 Gallery, has been a potent proponent of this philosophy for the last 16 years. The event returns for its 17th annual installment on Nov. 8 and 9, showcasing another assortment of light-based media, sculptures, installations, and interactive art. Previous InLights have been installed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (twice), along Broad Street (four times), and Monroe, Bryan and Great Shiplock Parks, among other familiar Richmond locales.

This year’s InLight will bring creations from ten different artists or artist teams to Pine Camp Cultural Arts and Community Center, a place with evocative wooded terrain and a rich history. The event will launch as it usually does, with a lantern parade, where area students show off and march with homemade globe, bottle and box lanterns (for tips on how to make one yourself, go to https://www.1708inlight.org/lantern-making).

Exploring open space

Subtitled “Grounds for Clearing,” the art on display this year will, according to 1708, “explore the material and metaphorical facets of open space… when Pine Camp first came to be, it was a clearing—a space carved out of the pine woods, far outside of the city where people went to heal.”

“We’re hoping that this exhibit can engage people, no matter what their experience with art is,” says Pollard, who curated this year’s exhibit with art critic and scholar Tiffany E. Barber. A Philadelphia-based artist and exhibition designer with a BFA in art education from Virginia Commonwealth University, Pollard lived in Richmond for six years and even spent time in North Side. “But I never knew about Pine Camp, which is a fascinating place,” she says. “Most of the artists didn’t have much awareness of the site or its history, either.”

In March, she and Barber visited the 50-acre site and learned about Pine Camp’s history, from its early use as a farm and city jail to its time as a contagious disease (and later tuberculosis) hospital to its grounding today as a community arts center. “[Pine Camp’s staff] not only engaged us in the native plants and natural elements of the site but also told us about the arts programming that was happening there, as well as the history as a former hospital,” she says.

Pine Camp represents a kind of exile, she found, but also a place of healing. “We learned that the land was mainly taken over by pine trees, and there was this idea that the trees were really good for your lungs, that the air was more crisp and clean. For someone with tuberculosis, it was very healing to go out in this space.”

To fully explore the setting, Pollard and Barber (who has co-curated the last three InLights) wanted to step away from convention. “We’re trying to change the language,” Pollard says. “There is an emphasis on light, of course. It will illuminate all of the artworks, but we’re putting less of an emphasis on works that have to have projections or have to be lit up a certain way… this will be a different way of looking at InLight.” There’s a featured dancer among the artists this year, Vitche Boul Ra, who “uses her body in interesting ways. It can be described as a dance but it’s a dance of ideas about isolation, caregiving.”

Ra’s work is conceptual and even, at times, uncomfortable. But it’s part of a larger whole, the curator says.”It’s the most abstract piece we’ll have, but there will also be more accessible, approachable works. There is Monique Lorden’s large inflatable sculpture of a pair of warm and comforting hands, where visitors are invited inside.”

Elsewhere, the team of Yannick Lowery and Qiaira Riley will urge visitors to gather sticks and leaves and other flora and turn them into stunning, blue-tinted “Cyanotypes,” using a slow-reacting photographic printing method sensitive to ultraviolet and blue light. This exercise will be a way, Pollard says, of connecting art with the natural world.

Curatorial and cohesive

Pine Camp once housed a segregated tuberculous hospital for African Americans; as a kind of bonus, InLight visitors can view the site of an ongoing archeological dig of the hospital’s grounds. “A lot of the work will reflect on that,” says Emily Smith. “All of the sites we pick in Richmond for InLight are complex and fraught and troubled in their history. We try to be true to the history of the site but to also be a broad community exhibition that is accessible and open and welcoming to people.”

InLight has changed its focus over the years, says Smith, executive director of 1708, and an InLight organizer since the very first year. She says that the lighted assembly started as a one-time thing in 2008, to celebrate the artist-founded gallery’s 30th anniversary. In its earliest installments, the thread of the event was only that the artists were to manipulate light in their presentations. “Around 2018, we got more curatorial in our approach, and in 2019, when we went to Chimborazo Park, we hired our first curator.”

While still putting out an open call to all artists, 1708 started to seek out known creators to make original works—rather than relying on installations already made—and began to focus more on artistic themes specifically related to the space. Smith says this shift meant that InLight has become more of a “cohesive” arts exhibit and less of a ragtag assembly of cool and interesting art. “We started using the spaces in a more profound way. It still takes place at night and uses light but has a continuity and a sense of place.”

Today, InLight boasts a $140,000 budget, with funds mainly coming from the National Endowment for the Arts. This includes up to $4,000 in production assistance and $1,000 dollar honorariums for each of the 10 artists and artist teams.

This year’s creators have deftly navigated the challenging terrain of Pine Camp, Smith and Pollard say, each mentioning the work found along the camp’s walking path, fittingly named “the Art Loop.” “I love this notion of exploring and discovering the artwork,” Smith says. “Some of the pieces will be obvious on the Art Loop,” Pollard echoes. “But some, you’ll have to enter the woods more deeply to discover. So it feels like a journey.”

“InLight: Grounds for Clearing” will take place November 8-9 at Pine Camp Cultural Arts and Community Center, 4901 Old Brook Road. The event is free. For more info, go to https://www.1708inlight.org