154 • October 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: LIGHTING

Since its dedication on May 1, 1897,the graceful French Romanesque linesof Chicago’s St. Vincent DePaulchurch has drawn admiring onlookers.But for three nights in May, passersbystopped in their tracks while othershung out of their cars to get a betterview of its colorful light show.

With guidance from lighting design-er Paul Gregory, of New York City-based Focus Lighting, four groups ofDePaul University lighting design stu-dents used moving and static images,inspired by artists AJ LaGasse, VincentVan Gogh, Leonid Afremov, and MaryAnn Papanek-Miller, to transform thechurch’s facade. An alumnus of theGoodman Theatre School, the prede-cessor of the DePaul theatre depart-ment, Gregory proposed the projectfor the university’s current technicaltheatre students as a way to help themexpand their skills.

Gregory has done similar publiclighting projects in Bochum, Germany;University of North Carolina School ofthe Arts; and the Marcus Center inMilwaukee, where he took inspirationfrom Wisconsin native GeorgiaO’Keeffe’s flower paintings. (The DePaul students took a field trip to checkout his work there.)

With support from DePaulUniversity president Father DennisHoltschneider, Gregory worked with

Chris Binder (chair ofdesign and technologyand head of lightingdesign) and JohnCulbert (dean of theTheatre School) toscout out a suitablebuilding. The churchwas an obvious choice.

“It’s impossible tomake bad scenery lookgreat; it’s easy to makegood scenery lookgreat,” Gregory says.“We wanted it to be awonderful experiencefor the students. Itwould have been unfairto just give them abuilding and say, ‘Lightit!’ So this project gavethem some restrictions by askingthem, ‘How would Van Gogh haveinterpreted this building if he were alivetoday?’”

Binder happily added the project tothe students’ regular curriculum. “Itprovided an experience that theywouldn’t otherwise get—in addition tothe work they did in class,” sheexplains. “We incorporated it into aseries of seminars that became theperfect vehicle for getting everyonetogether to talk about the project ineach of its phases.”

Binder assigned the 17 lightingdesign students into four teams; eachteam chose an artist whose work wouldbe interpreted. The first step was towrite and present it to Gregory, explain-ing and defending the choice of artist.

Anthony Forchielli’s group choseNew York-based artist AJ LaGasse.“There are shapes present in his com-positions that we could translate ontothe surface of the church and helpaccent the architecture,” he explains.“We primarily used the paintingsChocolate Mint Explosion and Blue

Building aHigher Art: An Experimentin ArchitecturalLightingBy: Catherine McHugh

Students from DePaul Universitytransform a church’s façade

The DePaul students outside the church, with one of thelighting projects in the background.

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156 • October 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

Moon Rising as our basis.” Along with students James Mitchell

and Rickie Latshaw, Forchielli also cre-ated the light plot. “We figured out theshots that we would need and wherewe would need to place fixtures,”Forchielli explains. “Since we aremostly being trained in theatrical light-ing design, one challenge was that wedon’t really light things just to lookcool; there should always be a moti-vating factor. In theatre, the script sup-ports our design choices. With music,there is certainly a lot of play in termsof lyrics and style, but with the archi-tecture, it wasn’t quite as clear.”

Another DePaul alumnus,Protolight, Inc. owner Chris Prezas,provided the project’s equipment,which included, from ElationProfessional, Platinum Profile 35 Pros,

Students at work, programming one of the looks.

The project drew the attention of many passersby, allowing the students to see the impact that lighting can have on a community.

TECHNICAL FOCUS: LIGHTING

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Platinum Spot 15R Pros, Six Par 300s,Arena Pars, and Level Q7s, plus ETCSource Four LED Daylights, ETCPaletta 42 LED strips, and Philips

Color Kinetics ColorReach Powercore.Control was via an ETC Ion 1500. Alsoused were Elation EWDMX wirelesstransmitters and receivers, Doug

Fleenor Design opto-splitters, and aPathway Connectivity PathportQuattro node. “A lot of us did wantframing in the profiles,” Forchielli says.

The students drew inspiration from the work of various visual artists, leading to a variety of looks.

160 • October 2015 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: LIGHTING

“The challenge was figuring out theangles. Some people wanted them forside scrapes on the building and somewanted them front-on, to frame outsome of the architecture with a pat-tern. That and the brightness of thefixtures were big considerations.”

Prezas provided guidance in termsof equipment choices, but the stu-dents made their decisions. “Theyhave to have room to make mistakes,because that’s the best way to learn,”Gregory says. “They would put a mov-ing head fixture with movable shutters

up on the façade and then have one ofthe shutters pull away so it looked likea paintbrush applying the paint.Incredibly creative stuff, but they bal-anced that out with how much time itwould take to do that versus howmuch time they would need to spendon color and cueing.”

The project began in October, butmost of the work happened in the lastthree weeks, with the opening nightset for Wednesday, May 20. Aftersolidifying the fixture counts, the stu-dents came up with a load-in plan but

found it took much longer thanexpected to set everything up on thefirst night. “But that gave us an oppor-tunity to bundle all the cabling andbuild some pods that made load-ineasier for the rest of the week,”Forchielli says. “We were setting it upin half an hour and striking it in 20minutes. It was about 80 – 90 fixtures,so that was pretty great. We hadteams of about 15 people on everynight to do the work, and we rotatedbetween the lighting designers and thetechnical directors at the school, whowere also a big part of the project.”

Beginning at 8pm, each group gotone hour to showcase its design onthe church. “The number of peoplewho stopped and asked what we weredoing was great,” Binder says. “I thinkthe students really understood not justhow cool it was but the kind of impactit could have on the community. I can-not stress enough that none of itwould have been possible withoutShane Kelly (chair of the design andtechnology department) and his stu-dents, who were instrumental in figur-ing out the logistics of how to get allthe equipment in the right places. Itwas a fantastic experience.”

The students are interested in doingmore architectural lighting, and Binderis committed to exploring how to domore projects like this. “This was aone-off. The opportunity arose, and wewere able to get funding for it,” shesays. “We are thinking about doing aKickstarter campaign or somethingalong those lines to keep this kind ofthing going from year to year.”

“We hire many theatrical lightingdesigners because of their training,”Gregory says. By the time they grad-uate, they’ve done 20 shows, foraudiences that are going to show upat 8pm, whether you are ready or not.They have a list of 100 things to dowhen there is only time to do 20, sothey are much more prepared. Thearchitect and the interior designerdon’t really build anything over thecourse of their years in school,whereas lighting designers see theirwork and learn what paid off andwhat didn’t.”

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