Core77

Art for Peace in Santa Cruz tonight.

What Scudder plans to do is to position a battery-powered light roughly the size of a car headlight every 30 feet along West Cliff Drive overlooking the sea, point them all straight up, have volunteers turn them all on at 9 p.m. and see what happens. The lights will stay on until the batteries run out.

It's International Peace Day, and the flashlights are supposed to be one of those light-a-candle-instead-of-curse-the-darkness deals, Scudder said.

"I don't think this is going to change the geopolitical landscape," Scudder said...

Art is always challenging, and the most challenging thing about working in the medium of giant flashlights is getting your hands on 500 of them. Scudder called every Costco store in the Bay Area before settling on a wholesaler who came up with all 500 lights at $34 per.

"That's $17,000 worth of flashlights," money that was fronted by a benefactor, Scudder said.
...
His only other big art project was building 12 giant papier-mache cows in downtown Santa Cruz last year, but he forgot to make them waterproof and then came the rains of winter.

"The cows all melted,'' he said. "It was too bad. I learned something about papier-mache."

The flashlight project is perhaps more thought out. He's got a police permit, he stuck announcements in all the mailboxes along the route, and when the event is over, he will autograph each flashlight and offer it for sale, at $80 each, which will go toward putting on next year's giant flashlight encore. Scudder says he is just getting started in the giant flashlight thing.