Cincinnati, Ohio is home to the largest light-based art festival in the country. No, seriously.

From the comparatively humble beginnings of “Lumenocity” in 2013, a then state-of-the-art projection concert experience illuminating Music Hall, Cincinnati powerhouse Brave Berlin showed us that scale was no barrier. Four years of escalating crowds overspilling Washington Park let them know they were on to something, and the city was hungry for more.

Partnering with The Cincinnati Regional Chamber and gathering funding from The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile Jr. Foundation, Brave Berlin brought in the experience shaping prowess of Agar and the large-scale art know-how of ArtWorks Cincinnati. In 2017, we witnessed the runaway popularity of an arts festival that swallowed the city whole. It was insane. The crowds were larger than all other Cincinnati festivals combined. Everyone was walking downtown, traffic snarled to a halt, bottlenecks abounded, and the streetcar looked like an overstuffed sausage about to blow.

The only thing that got people more excited for BLINK was when they announced it would happen again in two years.

In 2019 it was clear they had more time to think it all through and plan out the infrastructure. Amazingly, that plan was to go bigger. The 20 block footprint would swell to 30 city blocks, spanning Findlay Market through Covington. Light projections would double to 41 sites with the temporary sculpture installments and permanent painted murals following suit. That unthinkable “one million in attendance” would also grow to nearly one and a half million bringing an estimated $87 million impact to the city.

With the growth also came an uptick in quality. Word of this festival’s legitimacy was out and the art community was clamoring to get in. World class artists I’d only see on Instagram were riding bucket lifts on Liberty Street. Light projections moved from color wash screensaver patterns on a wall to site specific, highly technical renderings transforming the architectural darlings of the city.

There was a buzz in the air. People converged en masse to the city core and stared in awe.

Shortly after the announcement of a third installment, everything came to a grinding halt with the pandemic. Number three was put on ice until October of 2022.

With the extra time to plan, BLINK hired an Executive Director and promised the continued growth of the festival. Then the rumors started swirling and an announcement dropped a few months before take off. Founding partners Brave Berlin were cutting ties with the festival, citing deaf ears and cold shoulders. Would this be the signal of downfall?

Weeks before the festival, BLINK started dropping the list of contributing artists. It was another stellar lineup. As the full roster and map were released, it was glaringly difficult to overlook the downsizing of light projections. While retaining the 30 block radius, the projections fell back to 2017 numbers, only 24 in all. An odd move for a festival founded on illuminated walls.

The crowds were not dismayed, early counts estimate nearly 2 million in attendance this year. Kicking off the festival, the abbreviated parade route made Fifth Street an impassable sea of humanity. From there the crowds explored but the scaled back installation numbers were quick to be noticed. If not for the flow of people to follow, the barren blocks between sites made you wonder if you were on the right track. Between these oases there was little in the way of wayfinding, information outlets, or facilities for the swarm. Social media was abuzz with the lament of sore feet.

Now, I don’t need to tell you that people love to complain. A quick review of the map should have clued everyone in to pick your most comfortable shoes and your battles wisely. Zig zagging 30 blocks is going to add up. The spread is good for crowd thinning, and with the number of walls available to slap another mural on ever-waning in the city’s center, the outlying blocks will be increasingly necessary. It’s a wonderful problem to have.

But if you’re going to go large, the space between is important. Some voids were filled with returning favorites from 2019 like Inka’s “Faith 47” and Kyle Eli Ebersole’s “Crescendo.” While other walls covered in older murals were made new again like Jason Snell’s “I Am Ezz” and Graffmapping’s “Toy Heritage Mural,” both painted several years ago by ArtWorks’ summer mural program but reimagined through projection and sound. Some murals were lit by work lamps while others were oddly left dark.

There were rumbles of a more corporate feel to this year, a cash grab in motion. I didn’t really feel an overarching, logo-infested, megacorp overshadowing the festival though. Corporate sponsorship callouts felt reasonable and the price for food truck fair felt on par with the current state of things. Maybe it was just the time to reflect in the blocks between that gave people time to fall flat.

As festivals go in the year two thousand and twenty two, they usually don’t. Midpoint, Bellwether, Bunbury…but BLINK survives. Once it’s all set out before you, pointing out the shortfalls is simple. The rough edges all jump out. To create a festival this large with this many moving parts is Herculean at best. I hope they can continue to shape and grow, take the criticisms and make adjustments without squeezing the life out of this amazing opportunity.

While smaller in number, there was no shortage of inspired work. There were walls I could have watched all night. Antaless Visual Design brought back their showstopping Memorial Hall piece and doubled down on Mother of God Cathedral in Covington. Lightborne killed it with their work on Zaha Hadid’s iconic Contemporary Arts Center building.

Exploring an underutilized The Banks Zone, we stumble across Christopher Shardt’s “Parastella,” an LED sunburst of morphing Hubble Telescope photography set to relaxing music. Hovering over a field of bean bags, my son laid under it for an hour. “10 of 10, winner of the festival. Can we put this in my room?” The highest of praise from a thirteen year old.

And how could I not call out the Drone Show? With new technology will come new fads that all must include to remain relevant. This being my first one to see in person, it was jaw dropping. There’s something still oddly unsettling with watching seemingly disembodied lights dance in patterns over the horizon. Like otherworldly objects here to entertain.

I have my love for BLINK and my not so much. To be fair, most of my misgivings lie in the non-appeal of large crowds and the frustrations that follow. But when a random stranger approaches me, someone who likely finds themself downtown for the first time this year, trying to describe this thing they just saw that has them completely flummoxed – this is the place to be. To deliver folks to an unfamiliar place and present them with pure wonder – we all need more of this in our lives. We need astonishment, standing in a crowd galvanized by ooh’s and aah’s.

So I’m willing to look past the person who got impatient behind the wheel, the double stroller pusher trying to forge a path along the parade lined street, and the four abreast sidewalk hogs throwing stiff shoulders into oncoming traffic like they’re trying out for the Cyclones. I’ll take the awe and inspiration and hope the yahoos come downtown a few more times this year to learn the more subtle mechanics of urban navigation.

It’s amazing to me that Cincinnati is home to the largest light-based art festival in the country. We’re lucky to have it.