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healthcare lighting Spotlight welded and formed from stainless steel. Each kite is custom-fi tted with brightly colored acrylic panels and is illuminated with 5,000 LEDs. The project also features three larger- than-life bronze sculptures of playful children running with kites. The biggest lighting challenge with this project, as with his other larger-than-life sculptures, was "working with so many components," said Placzek, whose lighting-design expertise was self-taught. When incorporating light into art, "everything must revolve around that lighting," he said. "You have to know how wide to design the housing within the sculpture so the lighting components aren't visible. It's es- sential that there aren't hot spots, the lighting is well-contained within the piece and that everything looks even." He added that, "No matter how many renderings of a piece you cre- ate, until you're on site, you don't know about the ambient light, if the intensity of the light you're using is going to be enough, and if the colors coordinate with the site. There are endless variables to manage." Harmonizing those variables can be time-consuming. Typically, he said, the design phase and engineer- ing process can take up at least half of a project's total production time. The process becomes even more com- plicated when fi guring the myriad technical and electrical components that go into the light. In "Spirit," the overlapping kites present a brilliantly colored illusion of movement, made possible by 40- 50 Blaze Wet Location high-output LED lighting strips, custom-designed and housed inside each kite frame. A prototype of each kite was created to determine its thickness, as well as the distance from the light source to the outside shells surrounding the frame. The base of each kite was then designed to hide the 12v 60 watt Class 2 transformers, housing for the lights had to be waterproofed and numerous cords had to be routed to a separate location. To complete the desired dra- matic ef ect, Placzek needed the area around the sculpture to be as dark as possible, so street lights along the is- land were lowered and repositioned. "The lighting provides a whole dif- ferent look in the dark, and I wanted these pieces to come alive at night," he said. "We didn't add lighting in the kite tails, so the kites look as if they're fl oating and, because they're all illuminated from within, the visual is pretty dramatic. A 'colorful' approach "People are attracted to color and enjoy things that have a surprise ele- ment or are ever-changing. During the day, this sculpture looks like a certain type of piece but, at night, my hope is that it becomes a magical experience." "Spirit" was the fi nal component of a major interior and exterior renovation project at Children's Hospital, according to Dean Gandy, CEO of the University Hospitals Authority and Trust, and Placzek's work was "the icing on the cake." Hospital of cials and community leaders spearheading the project wanted art that symbolized hope, inspiration, energy, motion and life and this piece delivered the goods, Gandy said. "It's the fi rst thing people see as they arrive at the hospital and the last thing they see when they leave, and we think it met the spirit of what we were trying to do." The artist himself said he was delightfully surprised the fi rst time he saw "Spirit" completed and illuminated. "I received the call at 7:30 p.m. that everything was working and that I should come back to the hospital," he recalled. "When I turned that corner and saw it, everything just popped — I didn't expect it to be so colorful and brilliant. The fl oating kites, the colors were everything I had hoped for. "As an artist, you have standout moments, and that was one of those moments. I was exhilarated, thrilled — and I can only hope that the public will feel the same way." To learn more about the artist, visit matthewplaczek.com. Jill Kushner Belmont is a freelance writer based in Omaha, Nebraska. BIG HOPE Larger-than-life bronze sculptures of children running with illuminated kites symbolize hope and the innocence of childhood. The boy reaches 7 feet tall. KITE LIGHTING One of "Spirit's" kites is fi tted with acrylic panels and silk-screened by hand with custom colors complementing the hospital's exterior. 22 Medical Construction & Design | M A RCH /A PR IL 2015 | MCDM AG.COM