Chauvet Professional and Lighting & Sound Company Create Embracive Experience at Maymont Garden Glow

	Maymont Estate Park's "Garden Glow" walk-through event in Richmond, Virginia. Photo: Dave Parrish Photography

No one knows exactly how many plants and trees grow in the 20 acres that the historic Maymont Estate Park set aside for its popular "Garden Glow" walk-through event. One thing is certain however, each and every one of them charmed visitors by glowing invitingly in an enchanting field of light. Jonathan Blake and the crew at The Lighting & Sound Company made sure of that!

The project manager of Maymont Garden Glow 2022, Blake and his team spent 16 days setting up the outdoor attraction (as well as additional months designing and fabricating support pieces), to ensure that its thousands of plants, trees, exotic rock formations, and other scenic elements worked together to create a total embracive experience for guests.

"A key goal for us was to highlight all aspects of the ground's horticulture in a way that accentuated its natural beauty," says Blake. "In support of this goal, almost all of our LED fixtures were positioned to enhance the appearance of every scenic element. The entire event covered a lot of ground, so there were numerous opportunities to highlight interesting sights. I'm grateful to our client, Maymont Estate for given us the opportunity to work at such an impressive site. Also, thanks to our lighting designer and programmer: Ryan Williams, lighting control network engineer Logan Adams and installation team lead: Brennan Adams for making this happen."

Helping Blake and the design team achieve their all-inclusive vision in this naturally beautiful space of was an extensive and carefully planned lighting system anchored by over 300 Chauvet Professional fixtures from The Lighting & Sound Company's own inventory. "For this project, we made a distinction between 'intelligent' lighting fixtures, which were DMX controllable and 'generic' units, which are not controllable," says Blake. "All of our intelligent units were Chauvet Professional, and all were IP65 rated, which was critical given that his was an outdoor event that ran for three weeks."

This year's event was centered around the Japanese Garden section of the park, which included a large reflective lake in its center and an authentic Japanese Moon Bridge. The design team used ten universes of DMX there, installing networking around the perimeter and sending sACN from the show control headquarters to strategically placed DMX nodes.

According to Blake, the 52 COLORado Panel Q40 fixtures in his rig were especially important in helping the design team light the area and objects around the attraction's large lake. "The lake was very important to the overall effect of the event," he says. "Throughout the three weeks of the event, the park made very sure to keep the lake surface free of debris, to ensure that it reflected our lighting to the fullest extent.

"From our perspective, we particularly liked the long throw and saturated, bright punch of the Colorado Panel Q40," continues Blake. "This helped when we needed to position fixtures on one side of the water and light objects on the other side. This is our fifth year lighting this event. We undertook this project previously without the Q40 panels, so I can tell you first hand that they greatly improved our ability to light objects from a distance. There is no way we could ever do the event again without those units."

Providing immersive color washes throughout the space were 163 COLORdash Par H12 IP units and 40 COLORado 1QS fixtures. Adding to the magical effect were 22 Ovation E-260WW ellipsoidal units, almost all of which were used to project gobo patterns onto scenic elements.

"We used gobos to create depth and to set different tones in the space," says Blake. "We projected gobo patterns onto scenic pieces, such as rock formation and gates. There was even a key rotating gobo effect on a large waterfall. In the 'Glow Village' area, which is more of a festival part of the event as compared to the illuminated garden walk, the Ovation units projected the event logo on some large structures. In a few locations, some gobos were shined on a walking path to both provide a texture effect and illumination."

The design team also used an additional 24 DMX universes to run 40 ÉPIX Strip IP units and other fixtures. "We used ÉPIX Strip IP units to create a series of lighted archways that were placed together to build a dynamic light tunnel that guests would walk through on the way from the Glow Village to the Japanese Garden path," details Blake. "Once in the garden itself, guests heard traditional Japanese music played through speakers we installed that were shaped like rocks, so they blended with the aesthetics."

With all the foliage and scenic elements around them enlivened by light and evocative music in the air, guests at the garden were free to immerse themselves in an all embracive experience...exactly what Jonathan Blake and his team had in mind when they began working on this project months ago.