Lighting design Archives - Sprigs and Brides

June 22, 2020July 12, 2020

Completed LaceLightBox

a picture of a woman with a wall mounted frame

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Complete lacelightbox in situ. Photographs by Jayne Childs, thanks to Toby Britton for being my model.

Close up of lacelightbox — Desaturated version of previous image showing the clarity of the laser cut shadows

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Close up photographs of the lacelightbox reveal the play of shadow through the lasercut, text and bobbinet (Click on the gallery to read captions)
Below, final images of the small lacelightbox and the large lacelightbox in situ and different light levels

lace design with text as brides — Close up of the small lacelightbox through the frosted perspex

Corner of a frame — Close up of the frame edge. The frame is made from beech ply, and was beautifully crafted by customwoodwork design in Cotgrave

Framed lace lightbox — You can see the three elements of the lace layout in this image. l-r is the Charnia embrodiery on net, text as brides layered with charnia motif lace, text embroidery

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Lightbox in the dark — The text as picot layer is embroidered with phosphorescent thread, so really comes into it’s own after the internal lights are turned off.

Lightbox in the light — The text as picot layer is embroidered with phosphorescent thread, but doesn’t need complete darkness for the glow to start

Studio workspace — Trying to capture the depth of the lacelightbox, at 175mm deep

framed lightbox — Trying to capture the depth of the lacelightbox, at 175mm deep

Lightbox in the studio — Trying to capture the size and shape of the lacelightbox

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July 20, 2019June 26, 2020

Lighting ideas

I’ve been exhibiting in Karlsruhe, Germany for almost ten years now. I was invited to join a group exhibition by the GEDOK group in summer 2019. I showed two new lampshade designs, incorporating my laser cut design and LED lights. You can see the lampshades in the gallery below

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The blue version had a holographic insert which distorted the lights inside, the gold was simply cut silk. This, combined with a large filament lightbulb, was really eyecatching. I found it distracting that you could see the inside, so if I were to repeat the design I would bond silk to both sides of the stiffening.

The blue lampshade twinkled (see the video below)

I was supposed to travel to Karlsruhe with the work and install it myself. However, I didn’t make it to Germany as my Mum had a stroke the weekend before I was due to leave. I decided to stay at home with her instead. Luckily my fellow artists were up for a challenge and put the whole display together for me. It meant I had to design some step by step instructions for putting the light together. They did a fantastic job!

The lampshades on exhibition in Karlsruhe July 2019, image supplied by GEDOK Karlsruhe

I used the waste from the laser cut to make a wall art piece. See the gallery below for more information on how it worked

Using laser cut waste, a simple idea to use pieces of silk waste from the lampshade

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July 1, 2019May 27, 2020

Further experiments with lights

If you have seen the film Arrival (2016), based on a short story by Ted Chiang and directed by Denis Villenueve, you will understand the boundary or border between the visitors and the people communicating with them. They wrote or drew their communications onto the border. The human protagonists were concerned with interpreting the communication. My light box experiments in 2019 put me in mind of the glyphs written on that border.

You can see in the video below, I planned to make some kind of light installation, probably freestanding, for my second year. I planned to include colour and movement to the light and experimented with how big I could go, and how much distance between light and polypropylene.

Jayne Childs: MA Lighting sample 2019

I also used the laser cutter to engrave the front of the poly to see what that looks like (nice, as it turns out, but no effect on the refraction). I liked that you can see some kind of pattern, even with the light off.

April 20, 2019July 2, 2020

First LED light box

During late Spring 2019, I tried new ways of using lace and light in a way that satisfied some of my key words and followed my initial investigations into darkness and shadow.

I bought a wall mounted LED light box (think late night kebab shop illuminated menu board) to explore layering and shadow with a more controlled light source. I got very excited when I first set it up, hoping that lighting the lace from behind would reveal new ideas and shapes. To diffuse the lights I got some frosted polypropylene from Bonington shop and decided I wanted to have it curved. I draped some lace in front of it…

IT DID NOT LOOK GOOD...

I was SO disappointed. But I decided to try the lace behind the plastic. It blew my mind

The centre image shows the lace in front and behind. You can see that the lace behind the frosting is refracted and has an almost digital quality. As you move your perspective, you see the image break and almost glitch

Video shows laser cut lace behind polypropylene sheet