"Light Hearted" Wins Times Square Alliance 3rd Annual Valentine Design Competition

Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance in New York City, announced today that “Light Hearted” by Lauren Crahan and John Hartmann, of Brooklyn-based Freecell, won the 2011 Times Square Valentine design competition.

The Times Square Valentine is an annual competition to design and build a valentine for display in Times Square in February. This project of the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program is funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

“Light Hearted” is a ten-foot diameter lightweight construction with an open weave fabric that allows wind to pass through but still captures and reflects light. The main structure is constructed of five pairs of aluminum elliptical loops radially arranged with rotating connections, and covered with a skin of red fabric. Six volunteers will hold up the heart for display for 30 minutes at a time in Duffy Square in New York City’s Times Square from February 10th to 20th. Volunteers can register online at www.lighthearted.us.

“All of us at the Times Square Alliance are thrilled by this design and concept,” said Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins. “I’m personally looking forward to volunteering to hold up ‘Light Hearted’ for all the world to see.”

This winning design was selected by an Art Review Committee comprised of Barry Bergdoll of MoMA; Tom Finkelpearl of the Queens Museum of Art, RosaLee Goldberg of Performa; Cora Cohan of The New 42nd Street; Marvin Davis of Davis Realty; and Jennifer Lantzas of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Crahan and Hartmann founded Freecell, a design and fabrication studio for furniture and exhibition design, in Brooklyn, in 1999. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. They were finalists in the Young Architects Program 2010 for PS 1 - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Their work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in New York City at the Henry Urbach Architecture Gallery, Artists Space, and the Van Alen Institute and the Architectural League of New York. Crahan and Hartmann have both taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Volunteer to hold the heart up between February 10-20, 2011: www.lighthearted.us