M. Shire's
Ideas
Theme Park
Ideas V
|
 |
Page 5b |
| Glowfari - News article, 2021
|
Oakland Zoo’s illuminating Glowfari brightens up the end of a dreary year.
The second annual holiday lantern festival spotlights education amid all the fun.
O
by Lisa Hix, Bay City News Foundation, Nov. 12, 2021
Young children were delighted as they stepped on a tile of an outdoor disco floor at Oakland Zoo’s Glowfari: A Wildly Illuminating Lantern Festival, which changed from white to blue, then purple, then red.
Large circular swings changed colors like giant plastic mood rings.
That was only one small part of the holiday extravaganza, and that’s not to mention the hundreds of lantern sculptures throughout the zoo shaped like all manner of life-size and oversize flora and fauna that might flutter wings or bob heads when you least expected it. The intricate hand-painted paper, lit by LED lights, gave the lanterns the dazzling effect of stained-glass windows. In the lantern landscape elephants curl and uncurl their trunks.
|
A psychedelic wall of luminescent vines, fluttering butterflies and large 3-D flowers, whose petals moved in hypnotic, come-hither motions, greeted visitors. In the meadow, glowing cheetahs appeared to be frozen mid-leap attacking a zebra, while a hippo was caught yawning, revealing his big pink mouth. An oversized peacock suddenly lifted his tail feathers and displayed his train, putting on a light show worthy of Las Vegas, while little kids exploring the festival stared, their mouths agape. Lantern elephants curled and uncurled their trunks in a surprisingly natural way.
Elsewhere, glowing lanterns in the forms of monkeys, birds, squirrels and cicadas clung to real trees. Acorns were projected on to the walkway, and besides the myriad 3-D light sculptures, LED string lights were shaped into 2-D landscapes of animals and trees. Visitors who rode the gondola up to California Trail arrived in a strange land of oversize bugs and flowers. It would almost be creepy if the beasts weren’t lit up so cheerfully.
|
The lanterns were created by the one of the event’s partners, the Chinese company Tianyu Arts & Culture.
ON FACEBOOK
The zoo staff collaborates with Tianyu on choosing the animals and diorama designs for Glowfari. Once the lanterns have been fabricated in China, Tianyu ships at least 16 containers worth of sculptures to Oakland and sends a staff to live here for a few months to erect the lanterns and maintain them throughout Glowfari’s run. About three containers-worth of lanterns were repurposed from last year’s Glowfari for this year’s event, whereas 13 containers-worth were completely new. At the end of the event, the lanterns are packed up and stored at a N. California warehouse, so Tianyu can use them at other zoos, botanical gardens and lantern festivals, which have grown in popularity in the US in the last few years.
|
“This year, they added a lot more animatronic pieces,” an organizer said, noting she was particularly impressed with the elephant trunks. “It’s amazing what they can do. What I love is you can barely see the mechanism inside the lantern, even though they’re so thin. “We love changing it up and bringing in new lanterns every year,” she continued. “So it’s still Glowfari, but it’s like a new experience.”
Glowfari debuted at the zoo in fall 2020. Prior to that, Oakland Zoo had been known for its holiday-season event, ZooLights, which featured metal structures in the shapes of animals and holiday themes adorned with Christmas-type light bulbs. When she saw Tianyu’s lanterns at a zoo conference, she said she was ready for Oakland Zoo to try something different.
|
Elsewhere, glowing lanterns in the forms of monkeys, birds, squirrels and cicadas clung to real trees. Acorns were projected on to the walkway, and besides the myriad 3-D light sculptures, LED string lights were shaped into 2-D landscapes of animals and trees. Visitors who rode the gondola up to California Trail arrived in a strange land of oversize bugs and flowers. It would almost be creepy if the beasts weren’t lit up so cheerfully.
“This year, they added a lot more animatronic pieces,” an organizer said, noting she was particularly impressed with the elephant trunks. “It’s amazing what they can do. What I love is you can barely see the mechanism inside the lantern, even though they’re so thin. “We love changing it up and bringing in new lanterns every year,” she continued. “So it’s still Glowfari, but it’s like a new experience.”
|
“I’m like, ‘This is fantastic. We’ve been doing ZooLights for like, 25 years,'” she said. “And in my opinion, it was tired, it had been done and I wanted something fresh and new and exciting.” This year and last, the zoo worked with Tianyu to make sure the lantern-filled landscapes were not only amusing and delightful, but educational about conservation efforts. Throughout the exhibition are signs with the stories of the animals depicted, like California condors, gray wolves, African elephants and polar bears, and their challenges surviving in the wild as the climate changes.
For example, dozens of lantern pandas filled a massive 3-D forest of fake bamboo. A volunteer from Sunnyvale, who works with goats and in the zoo’s commissary, was admiring the scene. “We love it,” she said. “It’s so magical. It’s cool that everything is different this year.”
|
|
Copyright - ©2024, Michael Shire |
|
