STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA.- University of the Pacific in Stockton, California has commissioned visual artist and award-winning filmmaker Deborah Lefkowitz to create a site-specific installation for the Reynolds Gallery, entitled "Songs of Twilight: A Composition Written in Light." Lefkowitz composes with the subtle movement of light and will sculpt the entire gallery space into a kinetic environment. The installation opens with an artist’s reception on Saturday, September 13, 2003 from 7:00 - 10:00 pm.

In "Songs of Twilight," attenuated and undulating streams of aluminum screening will cascade down the gallery walls at various oblique angles until they reach the floor. Pools of light from halogen fixtures connected to dimmers and a computer-programmed control panel will slowly fade in and out, changing color as they shimmer and eddy around the myriad folds and bends of the aluminum screening.

Gallery visitors will be free to wander through this landscape of silvery slopes and subtly shifting forms, adding to the play of light and shadow with their own body movements. Writing about the essential role played by viewers of Lefkowitz’s work, art historian Elaine O’Brien observed: "Like shadows cast by the fires of Plato’s cave, we walk through an installation by Deborah Lefkowitz as if in a dream, assuming the tempo of a ritual, unaware that our every turn and glance has been predicted and choreographed by a master of spatial experience. We are actors in a theater made for the performance of time."

Deborah Lefkowitz will be in residence on the campus of the University of the Pacific for five weeks to fabricate the installation and work with students. She will present a slide lecture on Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 5:30 pm in Room 209 of the Jeannette Powell Art Center. The lecture will be open to the public.

Lefkowitz’s site-specific installations have been featured in museums and galleries in the United States and abroad, including the Robert Else Gallery in Sacramento, California; the University of Judaism’s Platt Gallery in Los Angeles; the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum in San Bernardino, California; the Memorial Union Art Gallery at the University of California in Davis; the UCR/California Museum of Photography in Riverside; and Galerie Am Scheunenviertel in Berlin, Germany. In 2001, she received an Artist’s Fellowship in New Genre from the California Arts Council.

As a documentary filmmaker, Deborah Lefkowitz addresses the relationship of historical time and personal memory. An in-depth discussion of her award-winning documentary, Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany, is featured in the newly published monograph Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics by art historian Marsha Meskimmon (London, New York: Routledge, 2003).

"Songs of Twilight" opens on September 13 and runs through October 9, 2003. The Reynolds Gallery is located in the Jeannette Powell Art Center, University of the Pacific, 1071 Mendocino Avenue, Stockton, California. The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm.