Saturday, September 12, 2009


Houston Jones Hall Sculpture Lights


The City of Houston Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department through its contract with the Houston Arts Alliance and following the recommendation of the Richard Lippold Foundation, commissioned ILD, Houston’s premier fine art lighting company to specify and install a high performance sculpture lighting system for the Gemini II sculpture in Jones Hall.

This superb metal sculpture is the work of Milwaukee-born artist Richard Lippold, and was commissioned in 1966 by the Houston Endowment and has hung for the past 42 years in Downtown Houston Jones Hall. Its web-like design is created by a combination of polished aluminum and gold-plated wire. The wires stretch from the focal point to the axis of the sculpture and generate magnificent interplay of light between the reflective surface of the meal and the transparent appearance of the wires.

This makes the artwork lighting an integral part of the display, and something that requires the best in equipment and effect to produce.

The original sculpture lighting system, installed years before, had performed adequately enough, but it had never done complete justice to the piece. Consisting of thirty 150PAR38 incandescent lamps, it relied upon light bulbs have been used for decades. These fixtures have since become undesirable because of their short lamp life and extreme power consumption for lighting art. They also produce something of a warm color temperature (2800K to be exact), which is less than optimum for this type of display. Ideally, a metal sculpture should be lit with a very cool color temperature lamp that produces a very white light.

After conducting a series of tests on possible fixture configurations, the design team of Tom Kretzschmar and Lance Gandy decided on a modern art lighting system that combined the best in light quality, energy efficiency, and low-maintenance. Illuminations lighting designers chose theatrical fixtures made by Source Four, and they custom built a mounting rack to support the equipment.

The luminaires specified by art lighting consultants Kretzschmar and Gandy feature 150 watt ceramic metal halide lamps. These lamps are built with custom tube shields that have concentric ring louvers designed to minimize glare. They are also manufactured with computer-engineered reflectors that capture and focus the light. Ceramic metal halide technology and enhanced optical design make these lights so efficient that it only took six of them to do the job that thirty incandescent fixtures were previously needed to do!

These lamps are also six times more energy efficient than 150PAR38 incandescent lamps. Savings on operating costs were guaranteed to begin accruing in a matter of a few short months. Even better, comes every one of these six lamps is rated at an average life of 12,000 hours—bringing a drastic reduction in the cost of replacement lamps and maintenance calls.

Sculpture lighting has significantly improved as well since we installed our new lighting system. The new fixtures produce a very white, cool color of light that is ideal for the polished aluminum and gold-plated wiring. They are controlled by an astronomical clock that turns the lights under the sculpture at sundown and keeps them on until 1:00AM for your viewing pleasure.

When illuminated by the new high-end lighting system, the floating sculptural components now gleam like floating glass rods in the night, and the gold-plated wiring erupt like a web of light that seems to spring from surrounding walls.

Whomever the artist and wherever the artwork is located, you can trust the lighting professionals at Illuminations Lighting Design to design and implement a fine art lighting theme that will showcase your collection in the best possible light on a budget you can afford. Let a trained fine art lighting company help you with your art collection.

Contact us toll free at 800-863-1184 or locally at 713-863-1133 to request a design proposal.

Since 1980, ILD has grown to include a team of over 50 talented and dedicated employees. Specialty divisions have been created to focus on such disciplines as
lighting design, electrical contracting, landscape lighting and home automation. Having specialists in each of these disciplines, while remaining true to the mission of offering home owners the "complete picture" of lighting design, is key to continued success at Illuminations Lighting.

We are located in
Houston Texas but provide lighting in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond.

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We are a full service lighting design build firm specializing in residential and commercial indoor lighting and outdoor landscape lighting installation, service and maintenance as well as home automation, home theaters and lighting control systems.


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