Tickets open Tuesday at noon—and will likely sell out within minutes—for the first round of performances of Grace Light, an immersive light installation at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. 

The ethereal experience is limited to 60 viewers for each performance and begins Sept. 8, with repeat showings on select evenings through November, with tickets released at noon on the 15th of the previous month. 

“You hear about ‘going to the light’ when you leave the earth,” said Grace Cathedral spokesperson Eva Slavitt of the experience. “It felt like that.”  

Visitors lie on their backs within the cathedral’s famed labyrinth to experience a 100-foot tall shifting curtain of light from above, designed by Berkeley artist George Zisiadis. The 35-minute journey of light and sound is set to a score by Gabriel Gold, a San Francisco multimedia artist. 

It’s the latest project from the San Francisco-based nonprofit Illuminate, the outfit behind popular displays such as the Bay Lights on the Bay Bridge and the recent transformation of Coit Tower into a laser-powered candle. 

Zisiadis focuses on large-scale, site-specific public spaces that strive for “both communal and individual transcendence.” He has created artworks for San Francisco’s Civic Center playgrounds and the Exploratorium, as well as in other cities such as Palo Alto, Las Vegas and Boston.

Gold’s work has appeared in local museums such as the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the California Academy of Sciences, as well as abroad in Iceland and Finland.  

With Grace Light, the artists sought to create a space for contemplation—much like the Nob Hill cathedral. 

“The movement of hazy light brought to me an overwhelming sense of peace, calm and connectedness with something greater,” Slavitt said.