Profile: Great Illuminations

Kate Wafer

05/01/2008

The lighting world has taken on a dizzying array of ways to glow. Shapes and colors come into play whether lighting a 30-room house or a 300-person event. Born 17 years ago in the city that never sleeps, Levy Lighting NYC displays a prodigious sense of style when it comes to the art of illumination.

Company president Ira Levy lit a Chelsea penthouse using an innovative plan that drew from the arsenal of options he employs for larger events. "The work has evolved," says the lighting designer. "You can build coves and use backlit glass and high hats, as opposed to the days of using only chandeliers and surface-mounted fixtures." Levy added a kinetic art sculpture of his own design that features LED blocks of color and low-resolution video streams.

"More and more, people are actually looking to me for the new and different. I have thought, ‘Too racy,’ but clients aren’t afraid." He projected the words Buy and Art onto two water towers in West Chelsea in New York for art curator Paige West’s book launch. For a private dinner at the Lincoln Center, he decorated the Kaplan Penthouse with crystal chandeliers rear-projected onto simple sheer fabric panels.

Large-scale events inspire Levy to create unique environments where guests can lose themselves in the theater of an evening. The company once filled the Frick Museum garden pool with 200 battery-powered rotating mirror spheres; the spheres being part of the Pronto lighting system, which Levy designed. While the effect at the Frick was all-encompassing, Levy’s recent landscape work shows a minimalist style that is more delicate and artful. He’s not afraid to punctuate a setting, as he did with red illuminated spheres highlighting the exterior of an event in Jackson Hole.

The advent of LED lighting gives Levy more options. Although, Levy says, "simple is sometimes the best solution." To light a stone-bordered pond at a private residence, Levy used outdoor-rated green LEDs for "a nice, saturated emerald-green color" and added submersible spots. The soft glow edges an African-leaf brass sculpture that stands at the end of the pool. By offering sophisticated lighting techniques, and being willing to edit them, Levy creates distinctive looks that light up the soul.

Levy Lighting NYC, 212.925.4640, www.levylighting.com