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Portland Winter Light Festival’s timing always hits just right, doesn’t it? By early February, Oregonians are usually dangerously depleted of vitamin D, clinging to our light boxes in futile attempts to ward off seasonal affective disorder while knowing there’s still, optimistically, two more months of rain and darkness to go.
But then, for a week in early February, the city lights up with 200 free art installations. People often end up seeing snippets of PDXWLF even when they didn’t plan to attend—perhaps an illuminated bike ride flies by, or a 17-foot fire-breathing metal dragon greets you at the Salmon Springs Fountain.
2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the festival, which runs Feb. 7–15. Alisha Sullivan has been at the helm of the event for seven of those years as executive director of the Willamette Light Brigade, the nonprofit that puts on the festival. Sullivan says it’s been incredible to have helped put Portland on the map for light-based, digital and interactive art. But perhaps even more important, the festival has brought fine art to the masses by being playful, fun and accessible. (OK and, yes, the installations almost always look great for the social media feed.)
“A lot of times people feel outside of art and this event is a door that says come in,” Sullivan says. “Come in and touch it and experience it.”
As PDXWLF has expanded in size over the past decade, so too has its influence. Artists’ networks have grown through collaborations. Architecture firms and construction companies are in the fine-art mix every winter now, trying to help artists realize their visions. Neighborhoods have started planning their own programming around the festival—Ankeny Alley Association in Old Town is going big this year, to the delight of Sullivan and her colleagues.
Here are five projects that got their start at PDXWLF but have now expanded beyond the event itself. Check them out and stay lit all year long:
The Roll Up
“It was all sparked by needing a place to house my wild idea for the Winter Light Festival,” says artist Caleb Jay Colours about his Northeast Portland community art center The Roll Up. Inspired by the kitschy black velvet paintings at Dots Cafe on Southeast Clinton Street, Colours—a muralist by trade—wanted to do a completely black velvet, glow-in-the-dark art show on black gallery walls. He found the perfect space in an old auto mechanic’s shop on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where artists and community members can “roll up” the garage doors and see what’s going on inside. It’s been open for about a year, now holding Colours’ art gallery, a miniature skatepark for fingerboards, and a hair salon. He’s even hosting the group show Black Velvet Vol. 2 to commemorate the festival’s 10th anniversary.
SEE IT: Black Velvet Vol. 2 at The Roll Up, 2145 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., instagram.com/rollup_pdx/?hl=en. Opens 5-10 pm Friday, Feb. 7, and on view through Feb. 15. Free.
FATHOM
FATHOM is the homegrown, underwater-themed immersive art show that exists in the same genre of full-sensory installation venues as Hopscotch in Southeast Portland or artist Mike Bennett’s dream worlds, but with more mermaids. After launching at last year’s PDXWLF, arts collective Roboto Octopodo, co-founded by Tyler FuQua, stayed put in its sprawling, 8,000-square-foot Southwest 4th Avenue and Alder Street location. FATHOM will leave its downtown home at the end of February, but Roboto Octopodo has another mysterious world in the works, PRISM, a “land where color and light have taken over.” PRISM will debut at the festival this year at the former Rock Bottom Brewery at 206 SW Morrison St.
SEE IT: FATHOM presented by Roboto Octopodo, 520 SW 4th Ave., robotoco.com. 3-10 pm Friday, 1-10 pm Saturday, 1-8 pm Sunday, through Feb. 28. $5–$22.
Willamette Light Brigade’s Morrison Bridge Lightings
PDXWLF is a program of the Willamette Light Brigade, the nonprofit organization that started in 1988 in order to light the downtown bridges. “The intention is this visual, civic dialogue about what matters to Portlanders,” Sullivan says. Individuals and organizations pay a modest fee ($150 for one night) to light up the Morrison Bridge in colors of their choosing, such as red for National Red Cross Month in March or green for a Timbers game in May. The causes can be hyper-personal, such as when the span recently turned pink for a gender-reveal party. Bridge lightings have gotten politically sensitive, though, such as in October 2023 when Multnomah County, which owns the Morrison Bridge, lit the span blue and white in support of Israel, to much controversy.
Sparking Creativity
In addition to working as PDXWLF’s communications director, Therese Gietler has a background as a filmmaker. Last year, she decided to put the two skills together and executive-produced four short documentary films about visual artists involved in the festival. The resulting mini-documentary film festival Sparking Creativity screened at Alberta Abbey in September. Four new films are in production at this year’s festival, and Gietler wants her directors to get the whole story—not just the pretty lights at the end. “If it isn’t successful, that is a story too,” Gietler says. “When we see the cut hands, the tears, the struggle, that’s a part of art.” Festival attendees can watch the films, each about five minutes long, at Hotel Lucia the second weekend of the festival.
SEE IT: Sparking Creativity at Hotel Lucia, 400 SW Broadway, pdxwlf.com/experience/sparking-creativity. 6–10 pm Friday–Saturday, Feb. 14–15. Free.
Art Rental Program
Visitors to Portland’s LGBTQ+ Pride Festival last summer enjoyed a little taste of PDXWLF in June. Nautilus Deep Sea by Sparks Designs cast rainbows throughout Pride Plaza at Southwest 12th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street from its stainless steel and aluminum angles. “It looked like it was born there,” Sullivan says. The placement was part of PDXWLF’s art rental program, which started four years ago with the aim to bring art into the community year-round and support emerging artists, Sullivan says. FuQua’s robot Mechan 42: The Explorer will be up at Multnomah County’s Central Library through March as part of the program, and Fabled Passage, a series of three archways by Seattle artist Colton Sampson, will be installed at Director Park through March as well. Sampson says it’s a comment on the lasting impacts of the Industrial Revolution, but Sullivan foresees a more practical application, too: “It will be a selfie machine.”