Giving the Simple Gift of Light #9 You might think that crafting lighting designs for hundreds of homes would get boring after a few years. How many ways can you light a kitchen before it all starts to blend together? As it turns out, thankfully, the answer is “to infinity, and beyond!” Creativity is tough […]
Light plays a central role in many of the foundational stories of humanity. I am most familiar with the narrative in the Judeo-Christian stories of creation in which the first recorded words of Yahweh are “let there be light.” But light as an element of the divine is not restricted to modern Christianity and metaphors […]
Read More… from Light Can Help Us #4: Let there be light…BANG!
My fourth article for DESIGNING LIGHTING magazine continues my exploration into the the future of lighting control, a future that must look beyond the venerable dimmer and finicky proprietary control systems. Getting the most out of light needs to be simple to install and even easier to use, compatible across platforms and long-lasting. You know, […]
Over the last decade or so, our family has taken a number of camping trips to some of the darkest places in the United States. What was the first lesson we taught our children about nighttime in the campground? Never shine your flashlight in someone else’s face. What is the first thing that greets our […]
Read More… from Light Can Help Us #3: (Not) Too Much of a Good Thing
I confess that sketching for the Don’t/Do This series is as fun as it is challenging. While this series allows me much greater freedom than last year’s 1THING series, that freedom comes packaged with a desire to “say it all” in a single room, a single sketch, or a single post. And if I know anything about lighting design, […]
In the beginning… I occasionally begin conference presentations or lectures with a brief look at the historic importance of light to our ancestors. I might mention ancient Egyptian worship of the sun-god Ra, tell stories of Helios riding his chariot into the sky to start the day as a Greek Titan, or quoting “God is […]
Read More… from Light Can Help Us #2: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
The stars of stage and screen spend a good deal of time in their dressing rooms in front of the mirror, checking to make sure they are ready for the literal spotlight. You may not be going onstage, but that is no excuse for poor lighting at your vanity. Leave the film noir to the […]
Light can help us. And we need help. Every so often I need to take a break from reading the news lest my outlook turn irreversibly grim. (Weird, I just used “lest” in a sentence.) Even forgetting climate disasters, wars, and political messes is not enough to turn the tide of news positive. We- humans- […]
Drumroll, please! Okay, that was unnecessary, but I do feel like celebrating this first post in my 2023 DON’T/DO THIS series. I did a run of these a few years back that were featured on Houzz.com, but I’m older, wiser, and…well, at least older. So here I go again, revisiting, revising, expanding, and enhancing my […]
I am very, very excited about my writing plans for this blog in the year ahead. The excitement for this coming year began more than twelve months ago when I set a plan for my 2022 posts. I thoroughly enjoyed blogging in 2022. For the first time, my writing was guided by a year-long plan […]
‘Tis the season…for lots and lots of darkness in the upper Midwest. Today there are exactly nine hours between sunrise and sunset, leaving fifteen in the dark. This is the season, in other words, for plug-in solutions to add a little light to my life. And that makes for a fitting end to my 2022 […]