Phoenix lights up the night this winter

Munro’s Arizona Canal piece, Blooms, is inspired by both water lilies and fishing rods. (Rendering by Bruce Munro Studio)

Making a virtue of these long winter nights, British artist Bruce Munro is bringing his light-art installations to the greater Phoenix area as part of a project he calls Desert Radiance. Since early November, Blooms, a bouquet of splash-shaped fiber-optic sculptures, has been floating on a Scottsdale stretch of the Arizona Canal, but the most ambitious part of the project takes place among the cactus at Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden (admission, $25). There, on November 22, switches will be flipped on eight of his best-known works—among them Field of Light, a network of dandelion-like LEDs so vast, it’ll be visible from planes landing at nearby Sky Harbor International Airport. See them soon: Come spring, these artworks will go dark.