Napa Lighted Art Festival

Background:

The Napa Lighted Art Festival is a yearly event where Napa Parks and Rec sponsors a weeks long event downtown in the month of January or February.  Anywhere from 2-3,000 people come to the downtown area to see light projections on the buildings, enjoy lighted art sculptures and participate in a community latern parade around the streets of Napa.  

It is a joyous and entertaining event for all ages and brings light into one of the darkest times of the year.  An underlying purpose of the festival is to drive tourist business in the downtown area during the slow wine season in Napa. The Festival is in its fifth year and is going strong. 

This year the Skills USA chapter at New Tech, in conjunction with the Digital Design Lab class, participated by collaborating with a lighted art sculpture group out of Israel, The OG Group. The House of Cards sculpture consists of larger than life cards stacked to make a card house.  On each face there is room to include artwork from different artists from around the world. Our Skill USA chapter submitted designs to the OG group and Napa Parks and Rec. They chose four pieces to include in this year's House of Cards installation.  

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Process:

Our first steps involved meeting the folks from The OG Group via zoom to understand the parameters of the project.  Students were asked to think about the concept of royalty and how that might influence what art they create.  Card templates were provided for use in Adobe Illustrator and students were encouraged to use big, bold, bright colors that allowed the work to look engaging when lit up.  

During that first meeting, the Hamas/Israel war had just started and we were concerned about the safety of our collaborators in Israel. They said they welcomed doing this project as a way to "bring light" into a very dark time. It became a welcome distraction for our counterparts in Israel.  We are so glad they decided to move forward with the project.

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Skills:

Many of the students had already been certified in Adobe Illustrator from a previous Graphic Design class and so worked, quite independently on their designs. Technically, they had to make sure their files were the correct formats and sizes so that the final print on plexiglass would look best. 

Skills that students drew upon in this project include giving and getting feedback on their work at various stages of the design process, understanding and reading a request for proposal, asking clarifying questions of the OG Group, researching images appropriate for the audience, and executing their vision through the use of the tools in Illustrator, such as pen tool, shape builder, mirror function, pattern making, and color design. 

The piece premiered on Jan. 20th and the chapter took a walking field trip to the sculpture on Jan. 23rd to document the work. Seeing the scale of the peice and their work in action really impressed them.  Many community members have been so impressed with this piece and we are so honored to have been included in the process.  Via social media, folks from around the world are getting to view the work and see what our students are capable of!

Next Steps:

We have a wonderfully collaborative relationship with Napa Parks and Rec and have participated in this festival since its inception. We hope to have many years of collaboration in some form or another, with the artists and business people who create the lighted art festival. Perhaps next year we can do a building projection like we have in the past, or perhaps work with a local or international sculptor to create something new and wonderful!  We have already met with one of the artists that lives right here in Napa and are scheming about future projects together.