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Luminous Tunnels Made Of Neon String Will Hypnotize You

Megan C. Mosholder's glowing installation "Terminus" visualizes train tunnels with ebullient sounds and visuals.

Conceptual artist Megan C. Mosholder has already impressed us with her spiderweb-like string installations that glow in pupil-widening neon, but her most recent project has us both awe-struck and inspired to mouth off to our local transportation officials. Terminus, a multi-sensory installation that debuted at the Goat Farm Arts Center in Atlanta, visualizes urban transportation systems, but as an improved variation in a dream scenario where the Atlanta government actually fixed all the issues that plague the city's trains.

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Terminus includes a tunnel made of string and ribbon that, with help of visual artist Pablo Gnecco, is illuminated with light and visuals comprised of horizontal and linear elements to conceptualize train movement. Sound artist Adam Babar used instruments to add audio that conveys the idea of travel. "When you walk into it," Mosholder told The Creators Project, "You became completely submerged in light, sound, and moving images."

The string, in particular, was meant to represent the groin vault structures that the Romans used to make cathedrals taller. "People would slow down and hang out inside," she said. "There's so much to look at and listen to, especially as the piece is this luminous structure in the middle of an area that's otherwise an industrial wasteland."

Mosholder added that the project makes her think of walking through NYC subway tunnels—a nod to when she had a studio in Bushwick. "Each [tunnel] is so diverse and weird—there's always something to look at." Plus, when visitors walk through her string tunnels, they can see through the strips, not dissimilar to looking out through a subway window.

Terminus was inspired by when she had to leave Atlanta last fall to go to her own exhibition opening in Ohio. It was during the "Snowpocalypse" when a major ice storm surged through Atlanta, and the whole city shut down. "I had to do some off roading to make it to my show and we passed 30 miles of parked traffic," she said. "People were stranded for 24-48 hours on Interstate 77 and I thought if I was in Brooklyn or another city, this wouldn't be an issue."

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She also described how as an emerging artist, she can't necessarily afford a reliable car, but even if she could—Atlanta is notorious for its traffic. "I like this city a lot and have been considering making it my home base, but it's so hard to get anywhere. There's this blossoming arts community here, but sometimes I think the lack of strong transportation is really stopping it from growing."

The artist noted that she's particularly interested by three dimensional art in site-specific locations that "comment on the current human condition." But she was quick to add, "Not in a preachy way, but an issue like transportation affects us all."

Even if the undercurrents of dissent mark Terminus, it's the type of conceptual piece that is so stunning that anyone will be amazed by it—three-year-olds and art aficionados alike. "My goal is to get people to stop and think for just a minute," she said. Maybe the piece won't translate her thoughts about Atlanta's falty train system to Georgia's public, but it's undoubtedly assured they will stop in their tracks (pun unintended) by the ebullient installation.

See more photos of the exhibition, taken by Steve Moraco:

For more on Mosholder's work, visit her website: http://meganmosholder.com/

Images by Steve Moraco

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@zachsokol