Unblurred: First Fridays on Penn is a monthly event sponsored by the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative. It is a chance for folks to come check out amazing art and meet the artists and the gallery owners.

For last week’s Unblurred, the JCC’s American Jewish Museum partnered with artist Lori Hepner to create a series of interactive workshops that will evolve as an exhibition over the next month at Assemble, a community space for art + technology.

I attended the opening. Two workshops were on display: one incorporating social media and DIY electronics; the other using long-exposure photography and a Star-Wars light saber. The turnout was great!

Cyanotype Tweets:

As the title suggests this workshop involves tweeting. As long as the tweet includes hashtag #drawlight, a computer program receives the tweet and communicates the tweet to a LED machine, which displays your tweet, one letter at a time. A cloth is placed over the LED display, the light dyes your tweet onto the cloth. After dunking the cloth into a cyanotype solution, the cloth is ironed out and added to Assemble’s Wall with the other tweet-art renderings.

Drawing Light:

Less involved but equally engaging, in the back of Assemble a really nice camera was setup on a tripod. The idea was to capture the movement of light when a long-exposure is set. The fun part involved people bandying a light saber while the camera captured the light movement. The effects turned out great.

Jane Haskell:

The light-art making at Assemble related to the AJM’s exhibit of the late Jane Haskell’s works, Drawing In Light, that closes February 19. Although we will miss Haskell’s ethereal neon light and painted works in the JCC Ostrow Palm Court, we will always to be reminded of Haskell’s influence on how we see and experience light.

Cover image originally found on Assemble’s Facebook Page