Diane Griffiths’ Celestial Beacon on Plymouth’s Guiding Lights trail

It started as a plain white tower on a tartan blanket in a spare room. It ended as a night sky you can walk up to on a Plymouth street, every star placed by hand. In between came weeks of work from Diane Griffiths, a Newquay artist whose lighthouse Celestial Beacon is now one of the sculptures drawing people around the St Luke’s Guiding Lights trail this summer.

From blank tower to night sky

Before the stars, there was a blank. Diane’s lighthouse arrived as bare white fibreglass, and the finished piece is a long way from where it began. Stars are her usual territory. She is a self-taught nightscape artist based in Newquay whose paintings look at how natural and man-made light changes ordinary landscapes after dark, so a lighthouse wrapped in constellations sits right in her wheelhouse. Working from a star chart pinned to her studio wall, she built up deep blues and greens across the tower, scattered it with constellations, and added a small red and white lighthouse and a burst of fireworks near the base. Look closely and the flags of Devon and Cornwall are in there too.

She has called the sculpture Celestial Beacon, and the stars are not random. Trail-goers can download a free constellation guide from Diane’s page on the Guiding Lights website, which is worth doing before you visit if you want to pick out what she has hidden in the paint.

One of 92 across the city

Celestial Beacon is one of 41 large lighthouse sculptures on the trail, alongside 51 smaller ones dotted across Plymouth. The whole thing is free to walk, and it runs from 6 July to 13 September. The idea sits somewhere between an art trail and a treasure hunt, and there is an official Guiding Lights app for £1.99 that lets you tick off each lighthouse as you find it, unlock rewards and read about the artists and their designs. A printed trail map is also available for a suggested £2 donation.

Having recently gone to see her sculpture out in the city, Diane said watching people react to it was the best part of the whole thing.

“Watching people stop, look a little closer and begin discovering the hidden details was one of the highlights of the whole experience,” she said.

“Every sculpture has its own story, and with the official app you can challenge yourself to find them all. I hope as many people as possible visit the trail before the sculptures are auctioned to raise funds for the hospice.”

What it is all for

The trail is run by St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth, and the money it raises goes towards the hospice’s care across Plymouth, South West Devon and East Cornwall. That East Cornwall reach is the local thread here, the same hospice care crossing the Tamar into Cornish communities.

“I’d really encourage anyone visiting Plymouth this summer to explore the Guiding Lights trail,” Diane said. “It’s a wonderful way to discover the city, enjoy some fantastic public art and, most importantly, support the incredible work of St Luke’s Hospice. I hope people leave with a favourite lighthouse, but also with a greater appreciation of the work the hospice does for our community.”

Jessica Wooller, Project Lead for the Art Programme, said the trail had brought a group of artists together around a shared cause.

“It has been a pleasure to work with such a talented group of artists on the Guiding Lights trail,” she said. “Their creativity and passion have transformed each lighthouse into a unique piece of public art, helping to engage communities and support the vital work of St Luke’s Hospice.”

Before they go under the hammer

The lighthouses will not stay on the streets. Once the trail closes, the sculptures go to a charity auction on Thursday 1 October, where they will be sold to raise money for St Luke’s. Anyone who wants to bid can register their interest now, which means the version of Celestial Beacon standing out in Plymouth this summer, blanket-in-a-spare-room origins and all, could soon be someone’s.