Magical underground Cistern gets illuminated
A new holiday light show is like no other in Houston.
Buffalo Bayou Partnership will light up one of Houston’s hidden treasures, the underground cistern, built in 1926 to store Houston’s public drinking water.
The cavernous reservoir, which is the size of one-and-a-half football fields, was decommissioned in the mid-2000s due to an irreparable leak. That was hardly the end of its story, however.
In the spring of 2016, Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing the bayou, opened the architectural relic to the masses, having rediscovered, restored and repurposed it into an accessible venue that has since housed several temporary art installations. Landscape architect Kevin Shanley dubbed it “the Cistern.”
Houstonians are invited to see the space as it’s never been seen before with the launch of “Cistern Illuminated.” The installation, featuring a custom light design by local visual artist and engineer Kelly O’Brien, will offer an enchanting perspective of the underground reservoir. Tours will be punctuated with music performances by the Schola Cantorum of the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
Upon entry, subtle undulations of a warm glow, mimicking that of flickering candlelight, will enhance the Cistern’s 200-plus concrete columns and add dimension to their seemingly infinite reflections in the glassy water surface below.
Large-scale works by international artists have flooded the space with light and color before — the first of which was an abstract rainfall simulation by Venezuelan artist Magdalena Fernández — but O’Brien has taken a different approach. To highlight the
majesty of the Cistern’s raw interior, his focus shifted upward.
“From literally being down in the water in waders, I was able to get a sense for what the Cistern truly was and what it really needed in terms of artistic intervention,” said O’Brien, who founded Fenris, a creative fabrication studio, in 2014. “What I discovered through experimentation is that what would work well in the space is to take the lights off the water and just light the ceiling. Personally, that’s where I think the magic is.”
O’Brien first started conceptualizing his design in 2019, after the almost yearlong exhibition “Spatial Chromointerference,” an immersive piece of optical illusions by artist Carlos Cruz-Diez. Fast-forward through the pandemic and by the closing of the Cistern’s third installation — Anri Sala’s “Time No Longer” — in January, O’Brien had refined his prototype and approached the partnership team, who happened to be in the midst of brainstorming ideas for an innovative holiday program.
“When we saw what he was doing, the lightbulb went off,” said Karen Farber, who the partnership named vice president of external affairs in May 2020. “It’s not an easy thing to make an impact in the space because it’s so large, but Kelly knows how to do that, let alone things like getting down into the water safely and running wires through the water.”
While the intention was always to transform the defunct reservoir into an exhibition venue, incorporating music into its programming has been a more recent commitment. The programs amplify the Cistern’s inherent acoustic quality and 17-second reverberation. Just last month, the organization concluded its latest series, “Underground Sounds,” with the final of four iterations, featuring the boundary-pushing ensemble Loop38.
Now, it will showcase the complex instrument that is the voice. For five evenings during “Cistern Illuminated,” members of the co-Cathedral’s Schola Cantorum will perform three half-hour concerts, singing a mix of ethereal pieces from the seventh century to the present day.
“Live music alone is a special experience, but enhancing it* with any type of visual experience, I think, creates more interest,” said director of music and Cathedral organist Crista Miller, who curated the program, taking into consideration the juxtaposition of light and dark that is present in the installation. “I love the opportunity to meld various art forms. Even if we did all the music from this concert at another location, it wouldn’t be the same. The Cistern itself is just so unique.”
On view through Jan. 8, “Cistern Illuminated” will mark Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s first holiday-themed endeavor in the historic underground site.
“We have this sense of excitement about trying something new in the space, about doing something special in Buffalo Bayou Park that really takes advantage of the fact that Houston is one of the great places to be in the wintertime,” Farber said. “I hope that this will be the thing, or at least one of the things that we do in an ongoing way.”