George Ferrandi can well remember when she found out that, in the sky, the North Star actually changes over time. It was, fittingly, a light bulb moment.

“I was just shocked by that,” says the conceptual artist and sculptor, slated to debut her long-gestating multidisciplinary art installation, “Super!Giant!Jump!Star!,” at this year’s InLight, slated for Oct. 17-18 in Abner Clay Park. “In our cultural imagination, the North Star is the thing that is reliable and not to change.”

It’s true. Thanks to a slow wobble in the Earth’s axis (star watchers call it “precession”), our direction in the sky gradually changes, causing different celestial bodies to become the North Star at different times. “There are around 11 other stars that will be bright enough and above our North Pole enough that they’ll one day function as our North Star,” Ferrandi says. (Relax. This shift is not imminent. Polaris, our current North Star, is to be replaced by Vega in about 12,000 years.)

The 2025 installment of InLight, an annual assemblage of contemporary light works sponsored by 1708 Gallery, is also seeing change. This is the first edition in its 18 years to spotlight one artist with one single theme. In previous installments, a dozen or so artists have been tasked to show individual lighted works at the outdoor installation.

“[‘Super!Giant!Jump!Star!’] is light-based, and conceptually, aesthetically and visually, it makes sense with InLight,” says the gallery’s director Emily Smith. “But it will be a little different this time. There will be more performances, and more of a schedule of events than in years past.”

Richmond Symphony to perform Friday

Working with a large cast of community creatives, Ferrandi will commemorate the North Star’s celestial shift in a two-day ceremony that utilizes original songs and dances while showcasing giant illuminated paper sculptures that represent those lucky stars slated to become our future guiding light. At the start of the event, on Friday at 7 p.m., there will be a premiere of a new 30-minute orchestral work commemorating the proceedings from composer Jherek Bischoff, performed by the Richmond Symphony.

“Bischoff’s piece really varies,” says Matt Wilshire, the symphony’s vice president of artistic planning and orchestra operations. “The character changes quite a bit from movement to movement because the entire piece is talking about these different stars. Each of those movements corresponds to a different sculpture, which then directly corresponds to a different northern star and their characteristics.”

Wilshire says that the RSO, led by Associate Conductor Hae Lee, will also perform another work that references the sky, “Overture to Estrella de Soria” by Franz Berwald (1796 -1868), as well as a piece, “Stars and Sand,” from pioneering female Richmond composer Mary Howe (1884-1972). “We wanted to make sure we made connections back to the stars and things here in Richmond itself,” he says.

To that end, a traditional country barn dance is also scheduled for Saturday, and there will be music during each night’s “Axial Precession Procession” performed by Brooklyn-based indie rock singer Mirah, accompanied by members of the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir. The event will conclude on Saturday night with something called “The People’s Dance,” which Smith describes as “a two-part, one-part contra dance, like square dancing, which will become a more experimental version.”

“It’s going to be a party,” Ferrandi says. “We make such a big deal out of the earth rotating around the sun once on New Year’s. We put on our best clothes and fancy hats and drink special drinks and reflect on the past and predict the future and that’s for one rotation around the sun. So how are we going to acknowledge this transition of a star that for hundreds of years was a locus point that led ships to safety, led enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad? I mean, Frederick Douglass’s newspaper was called The North Star.”

She thinks that there should be community customs that celebrate the transition of the North Star. “But is that like a UN project or is it up to NASA? What if it’s up to us? And what if we started it now?”

The starry-eyed concept has been gestating with her for more than a decade. An earlier incarnation of the work was due to be staged in Kansas in 2019 until a tornado wrecked the site the night before. Miraculously, the lighted sculptures — created with lightweight pieces of wood, paper and electrical wiring, adorned with handles readymade for motion — were unharmed. A few of them were dusted off and showcased in an exhibition of Ferrandi’s work, “once & future stars,” at 1708 Gallery in 2024.

That exhibition was installed in conjunction with a show at the Anderson Gallery of works by the late Joe Siepel, the former dean of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts who was Ferrandi’s instructor at VCU. “I did my undergraduate work there,” the Baltimore native says. “Joe was my first sculpture teacher. I was his studio assistant and his TA, and we stayed friends after I graduated. He was just very supportive of my work and in particular this project. He really got this project.”

To prepare art lovers for Ferrandi’s InLight showcase, the Anderson has, since August, been showcasing another exhibition of her work, much of it culled from in VCU’s Special Collections, called “Big Top Energy: Schemes & Souvenirs.” The large-scale illuminated sculpture in this exhibition, “Iota Cephei,” is a new sculpture created this summer for InLight by Ferrandi and a team of interns at 1708 Gallery and The Anderson.

Food and events

“Super!Giant!Jump!Star!” will also incorporate food into its star ceremony, Ferrandi says. “The team climatologist researched Virginia-specific agriculture based on climate projection models for a thousand years from now and came up with a set of data about what kind of crops will grow in the Richmond area when the next North Star moves into position.” Some regional chefs from Secret Supper Society, a Richmond organization, are making a menu for the event with those ingredients, she says. It’s a menu from the future.

Smith says that there will still be InLight staples like the lantern making and parade. “The lantern making will be hosted from 7-9 p.m. on Friday, and we’re inviting everyone to participate with their own lanterns in the Axial Precession Procession, which is the choreographed procession of the large sculptures.”

This is the first time that InLight has been held in Abner Clay Park. Last year’s affair brought creations from ten different artists and artist teams to Pine Camp Cultural Arts and Community Center. Previous editions 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 Richmond locales.

Wherever it goes in the future, will this one-artist approach represent a new direction for future editions of InLight? “Doing it this way is different from in the past,” acknowledges Smith. “And it does invite a moment of reflection. What do we want to do next with this? Is this the model or do we return to the other model? Maybe there’s a model we haven’t thought about yet?”

InLight 2025 will showcase George Ferrandi’s “Super!Giant!Jump!Star!” at Abner Clay Park, Friday, Oct. 17 and Saturday, Oct. 18. Free. For more information, go to https://www.1708inlight.org/

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InLight schedule 2025:

FRIDAY

7-9:00 p.m. Lantern making

7:05-8:05 p.m. Richmond Symphony and Jherek Bischoff

7:20 p.m. Future North Star sculptures arrive

9:15 p.m. Axial Precession Procession (and lantern parade) with Mirah and The United Voices of Ebenezer of Richmond

SATURDAY

8:30 p.m. Axial Precession Procession with Mirah and The United Voices of Ebenezer of Richmond

9 p.m. Traditional barn dance

9:45 p.m. The People’s Dance Experiment