Hello Sourcers!

We’ve got a lot to cover this week so let’s get right into it.

💫 Lights!

🌈 Color!

💎 Treasure! 

🐦‍⬛ Birds!

🎨 Art!

Before I get started, I want to give big thanks to folks who came out to Crooked Mouth Brewing last week for the debut of our Public Media Pils. Peter and Christine pulled a shift behind the bar to share our new beer with everyone, and it was truly a great community event. You can still swing by the brewery and grab a pint (or a four-pack) of the Pils, and a percent of the sale goes to WSKG!

This weekend, Binghamton plays host to a truly unique event as LUMA enters its tenth year. LUMA brings in artists from all over the world to transform the edifices of downtown Binghamton into amazing art pieces using powerful projectors and 3D animation.

The event kicks off at 8:30pm Friday and Saturday and runs past midnight, sprawling across several blocks of downtown Binghamton. Expect the crowds to be pretty sizable. 

If you need something to do before dark, the Colorscape Chenango Arts Festival kicks off in Norwich this Saturday, with three stages of music all weekend. It’s two days of curated art, music, and literary arts performances, with creative spaces and activities for kiddos of various ages.

Both LUMA and Colorscape are free.

Last but not least, there’s a mystery going on in Ithaca with the History Center trying their first Tompkins Treasure Hunt. A local jeweler, the Jewelbox, donated $10,000 in gems that will be hidden somewhere in Tompkins County. Registered treasure hunters will get their first clue on Saturday, but the folks at the History Center expect it’ll take over a week for the eventual winner to solve the puzzles, suss out the clues, and find the treasure.

This event requires participants to pre-register, which you can do here.

As we move into September, there are tons of things going on, and although we can’t cover them all, I hope we’re giving you a couple options to stay busy while the leaves turn.

Yours,

Bob Proehl

Locally Sourced editor

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Liminal Spaces: A Visual Memoir at Roberson Museum, is a sweeping, museum-wide exhibition by Binghamton-born artist Rich Harrington. For the first time in Roberson’s history, a single artist has had work in every gallery and even the historic Roberson Mansion. And the effect is transformative. I was fortunate to tour the exhibition with Harrington himself as my guide.

“This is not just in one gallery. We’re in the entire Roberson campus, including the mansion,” Harrington told me as we walked through the rooms. “Part of that was to create other liminal spaces between one piece and another piece.”

That word, liminal, is key. Harrington’s work lives in the “in-between”, the thresholds of memory, identity, and change that shape all of our lives. Drawing on his own childhood in the 1960s, he blends school life, games, suburban rituals, and pop culture touchstones into works that feel both familiar and new. This isn’t nostalgia for its own sake - Harrington reshapes what we think we know into something surreal, layered, and deeply reflective, asking us to consider: how do we learn who we are, and what parts of that story get left out?

One of the most striking paintings in the exhibition is First Day of School, which reimagines a photograph from Harrington’s own childhood. “I have a starched seersucker shirt on with these very ironed chino pants. What’s interesting about the photo is how iconic it feels of the early-1960s suburban lifestyle,” he recalls. But, as with much of his work, the deeper meaning emerges when you look closer. At his elementary school, children were given ID tags to wear in case they got lost. “It had your name, your parent’s name and phone number, your teacher, and the school you went to. I understand the logic, but it was also a subtle way of labeling.” In Harrington’s version of the photo, the tag doesn’t list his information - it simply says “gay,” with a checkbox beside it. 

This questioning of labels and identity runs throughout the exhibition, surfacing again in its central piece, Nuclear. Drawing inspiration from the 1950s board game Go To The Head Of The Class, the imagery of a traditional nuclear family feels familiar, but the labels associated with each image have been deliberately rearranged. Framed in bright pink LED lights and glittering with reflections from a nearby disco ball, Nuclear immediately catches the eye. But Harrington insists it’s more than spectacle. “You know, I'm trying to set up a fun experience that draws people in and gets them to think and start a dialog, because at this point in time, we need to be talking about this stuff. It's a pretty bold exhibit, especially for these times. I mean, this could be shut down tomorrow, but it won't be, and I won't be either.”

Throughout the exhibition, Harrington uses humor, honesty, and bold visual storytelling to create a space where difficult ideas become approachable. One moment you’re smiling at a playful twist on a childhood memory; the next you’re drawn into deeper questions about how identity is shaped, labeled, and understood. His art doesn’t hand you answers, it invites you to pause, reflect, and begin a conversation.

Liminal Spaces: A Visual Memoir is on view through October 19 at Roberson Museum. 

Is there cool art stuff happening in your town? I would love to hear about it!

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I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it a little offensive that it’s already September. The autumn sweaters have come out of storage to fight off the morning chill, and I may or may not be muttering to myself around 8 p.m. when the sky is already dark.

But there are upsides to the changing seasons and no, I don’t mean pumpkin spice. One of the best is that fall migration is in full swing. Millions of birds are on the move, leaving their summer breeding grounds and heading south. Along the way, they might “bless” a few cars and deck chairs, but mostly, they offer us a front-row seat to one of nature’s great spectacles. All you need is a pair of binoculars and a willingness to look up.

If raptors are your thing, Franklin Mountain in Oneonta is the place to be. The Delaware-Otsego Audubon Society has rolled out something new this year: The Great Bird Migration Challenge. It’s a life-sized board game at the sanctuary that gives families a hands-on way to explore the many challenges birds face on their journey. And don’t miss the Hawkwatch where raptors are already on the move. Migration charts posted at the site can help you time your visit (tip: a brisk northwest wind usually improves your chances).

You’ll find the DOAS Sanctuary and Hawkwatch at 52 Grange Hall Spur Road in Oneonta.

And one more thing: this is the season to turn off those outdoor lights. Light pollution is a growing threat to nocturnal migration, and more communities are taking action to reduce it during this critical time. You can learn more about the role lights play in bird migration at BirdCast.

If you’d like to supplement your sky-watching with some learning, then I highly recommend Scott Weidensaul’s A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. It’s a fascinating and depressing book on the migratory habits of birds and the environmental threats they now face. And a shout-out to how our understanding of migration came about which is highlighted in Rebecca Heisman’s Flight Path: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration.

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