Reflections on Light, Sound, and Five Winters at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Sam Okerstrom-Lang, SOLSTICE Creative Director & MASARY Principal Artist

For the past five years, our studio has been crafting a large-scale, meditative sound and light experience at Mount Auburn Cemetery—a nearly 200-year-old National Historic Landmark on the edge of Cambridge and Watertown, MA. As we approach another winter season, we’re taking a moment to reflect on this evolving tradition, one that has welcomed over 70,000 guests since this meaningful  collaboration began.

Our artist collective is rooted in the relationship between light and sound. For over a decade, we’ve created installations and performances across the country that explore new expressions through contemporary media tools and interdisciplinary practices. Much of our work lives in public space, including past projects at Fenway Park in Boston (Waking the Monster, 2015), the Roebling Bridge in Cincinnati (Rumble, 2019), and the Arizona Canal in Scottsdale (Say What You Will, 2021). These places are shaped by their own atmospheres—civic, commercial, and social—each influencing how public art is received and perceived.

We’ve always tried to meet people where they are, to provoke thoughtful engagement through abstraction, to transform infrastructure into portals of expression, and to invite the public into creative, even transcendent, moments. But these aspirations only go so far depending on the site. We’ve long yearned for public spaces that can truly hold vulnerability, invite cosmic reflection, and offer peace. Mount Auburn Cemetery has been that rare and powerful place.

Microcosm on Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn 2025
Presented by Friends of Mount Auburn

Being the first garden cemetery in the United States, Mount Auburn has inspired hundreds of other rural cemeteries to do the same. Today the same trees that bring peace and rejuvenation were still there over 100 years ago – it is a place where time can feel elastic, where you are invited to move as slow as nature, and a place that consoles the remembrance of life through memorials and gathering. With over 100,000 graves across 174-acres of the arboretum, it is a remarkable image combining lush nature and mortality into an inseparable composition of the two. Who thought that one could be so peaceful while also being so close to the notion of death or sorrow? Who knew that carved granite, marble, and slate could be intrinsic to oak trees, shrubs, perennials, and song birds? We may see other like-compositions more often in the 21st century, but it was the original vision of Mount Auburn in 1831 to see this infused relationship of death and nature through as the beginning of the rural cemetery movement in the 19th century. I share all of this to situate the cemetery image and its unique place in history – grounding it in vision, time, and recognize its unique lively atmosphere which is active to this day.

A spring day at Mount Auburn Cemetery 2025

Mount Auburn has always been a welcoming place for community, for gathering, for holding some of our most vulnerable human experiences – the confluence of its transcendental elements stands out drastically from typical public art locations across the country. In 2020 our studio began collaborating with Friends of Mount Auburn (their non profit organization) to reimagine a winter solstice candle service they had been hosting since 1992. The simple gesture of communing, lighting a candle for someone lost, or lighting a candle for more hope is a simple yet profound gesture to participate in. Each elemental candle flame glows and sways, and together with hundreds others creates a larger constellation of collective light, aromatics of wax, and hope during the darkest day of the year (December 21st). It is an intimate reminder that returning light is near and that one is never alone in their personal distress. Mount Auburn held this procession in one of two of the nondenominational chapels – which included voices of clergy and a string trio who are still performing each year. It became the the most popular public event at the cemetery each year, welcoming 300 guests gathering to bring light into darkness together. 

We were invited by Bree Harvery, Vice President of Cemetery Services, to join them in reimagining their candle service in 2020 when in-person events were unsafe due to Covid. Bree saw a vision for how the event could evolve and impact more guests in their community, there was a shared belief that our work together could flourish. These were the beginning moments of our alchemy, combining Mount Auburn’s history and tradition with MASARY’s contemporary media art practice - a never before explored partnership. What started out as a 1 night virtual broadcast program has now evolved into a 10-day event welcoming more than 12,000 guests a year. At the heart of this growing ritual of light is the timeless candle lighting service and surrounding it is an expanding outdoor collection of monumental sound & light artworks, an illuminated landscape of their monuments and trees, and a thought artist offering from local luminaries which are all interconnected through meandering self guided pathways.

Rob Bethel performing inside Bigelow Chapel for the opening of the live-broadcast of SOLSTICE in 2020 - Photo by Aram Boghosian

SOLSTICE: Reflections on Winter Light has evolved into a sincere seasonal tradition. It avoids the tropes of commercial spectacle in favor of something quieter, something perhaps more essential. . It offers space to mourn, to meditate, to feel awe, to be together, or to simply walk in silence. It’s a ritual of light that meets people where they are—without doctrine, yet deeply spiritual. While similar works could happen in other outdoor places, it is the unique resonance of Mount Auburn—its forms, its trees, its quiet, its service—that allows this particular expression to take root.

This collaboration has been carefully shaped with many partners. We work closely with the Cemetery’s Horticulture, Facilities, and Services departments to protect the landscape and honor daytime functions including funerals, burials, and family visits. Our production partner, AVFX, has been with us since day one, helping us realize the vision with care in a space not equipped with production  infrastructure. Dozens more—from hospitality and event staff to parking attendants—make this experience possible. We are deeply grateful.

Eclipse installed on Beech Ave 2025

Each year, the tradition includes familiar elements as well as new commissions. It’s an attempt to strike a rhythm—something guests can return to—while leaving room for growth and surprise. Though only five years in, SOLSTICE is both maturing while still emerging. This collaboration proposes something else: a model for shared experience grounded in light, shaped by loss, and open to wonder.

There’s something in us that responds to the solstice. Perhaps it’s the quiet knowledge that light will return. Each December at Mount Auburn, we hope this offering becomes a space for people to feel that truth—for themselves and for each other.