September Issue - PLSN.com

PLSNINTERVIEW
Heights, MI. We finished
a project last year with the
Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American
History, where we did a walk-through
exhibit. And, we’ve just finished two museum
exhibit projects at the Henry Ford Museum in
Dearborn, MI.
Did that happen
as a result of
being affiliated
with GM?
I saw a niche there. It was
hard for them to decipher lighting
quotes and they needed a local
Tom Bagnasco
Lighting in the D
By RobLudwig
If you’re from the Midwest, it’s not hard to
figure out that the automotive giants in
Detroit and their subsidiaries have met
with economic hard times. In the land of
buyouts, downsizing and exodus, Tom Bagnasco
has been a fixture with the world’s
largest auto manufacturer, General Motors,
for more than 18 years—a feat for any designer.
As an adept small business owner, he
has learned plenty along the way and diversified
his customer base. In our PLSN Interview,
Bagnasco discusses lighting in the D.
How did you get started in
the industry?
We started out like a lot of guys in the
business, with local bands, probably around
1975. LDS (Lighting Design Services) is a
Serviced Disabled Veteran owned business.
I was in Vietnam from 1969 through
’71—honorable discharged in ’72—with the
Marine Corps, and it’s kind of ironic because
when I was in the bush, I was listening to
Grand Funk Railroad and Wolfman Jack on
Armed Forces Radio. I ultimately ended
up touring with Grand Funk for a number
of years, starting in 1979, which is when I
started touring with national acts. The next
big guys out of Detroit were the Romantics,
and I did their breakout album tour in 1981,
as their lighting designer/director. Then did
the John Cougar Mellencamp tour for the
American Fool album in 1982.
That was pretty big at
the time.
I hit a lot of these guys on their premiere
albums and it was a lot of fun. There were a
number of other ones, but those are the guys
I was with most of the years I was touring
with rock ‘n’ roll.
Then you moved into
corporate work, right?
We moved into General Motors work
about 18 years ago—we’ve actually been a
supplier to them for 18 years now.
What does Lighting
Design Services, do?
We provide design, consultation,
specify equipment and provide bid
packages for all of our clients, as
well as implementation.
designer to help them, and I was available
at the time. Like I said, it’s been a long term
relationship now.
Working for anybody
for 18 years is quite a
while. What is your role
with them now?
My primary role is to design, consult and
implement auto show exhibits. We’ve been
doing that since 1989 through 2006. From
the year 2000 through 2006, I’ve been the
lead designer on the GM Experience. We do
a lot of other special events for General Motors,
such as the upcoming SEMA Show 2006
in November, in Vegas.
Just how busy does GM
keep you?
GM is about 40% of our overall business.
The rest of it is architectural lighting in
churches, museums and specialty projects. As
a disabled veteran-owned business we have
access to government contracts, and we’re
working on some stuff for Homeland Security
and the Department of Natural Resources.
GM and the U.S. auto industry
are hurting. How
do you see that affecting
businesses that are built
on that economy?
From what I can tell right now, even
though everyone is in dire straits, the way
they sell product, even in hard times, is to
market product, and their biggest envelope is
the auto show. Like I said, they’re about 40%
of our business, and obviously a very good
client, but not our only client. This time of year,
we are quite busy with museum projects.
What’s that like?
We design, engineer and specify museum
lighting, and we’ve done about five museums,
now. The first one was the National
Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. We
did the GM World Museum in Detroit, MI.
We did the GM Heritage Museum in Sterling
They all sound like
interesting projects.
What can you tell us
about the Henry Ford?
It’s called the “With Liberty and Justice
for All” exhibit. It’s a permanent exhibit
within the confines of the building and we’re
basically lighting exhibits, graphics and,
most importantly, we’re lighting historical
artifacts throughout the exhibit space, such
as remnants of Washington’s Camp, a letter
from Patrick Henry and the Rosa Park’s bus. In
effect, we’re lighting things that have shaped
American History.
That carries a lot of
responsibility.
We use very, very low footcandle readings
on anything of consequence—three
to four footcandles on any given artifact or
historic piece is what we end up looking
for—so it’s quite tricky to get that to work
in that environment and have it lit properly.
There’s a lot of contrast—it’s very museum
style lighting.
You use the dark spaces
and low illumination
levels to light most
things in order to control
light damage?
It’s to control damage. Even though you
use UV filters, it can still damage paper, in particular,
and any cloth material, even leather.
We have to be very careful. The pathway lighting
may be 40 or 50 footcandles, but those artifacts
are very precisely lit not to exceed four
footcandles. It’s tricky and a lot of fun figuring
all of that out.
We’ve got another exhibit that just
opened this summer at the Henry Ford. It’s a
historic building called the Soybean Lab and
it’s more of an architectural project. We did
period lighting for the building itself, because
of its historic nature around the turn of the
century, and I was able to conceal LED lighting
to support that look and be able to light the
artifacts from a concealed location. It looked
as close to period as you could get, down to
the lamps which were historic Thomas Edison
1890 filament lamps. We snuck in some LEDs,
hidden behind the timber of the building, and
we were able to get a 20-footcandle reading
out in front with it recessed behind columns
and structures.
It would seem that
LED fixtures make a
lot of sense. They may
not offer the efficacy
of conventional light
sources, but they have
no UV, right?
You can get the footcandle reading
you’re looking for and feel confident you’re
not going to damage precious American
artifacts in the process.
We’ll wrap this up with
one of the traditional
closing questions: Do
you miss being on the
road, touring?
[Laughs]. I do. That’s where I learned
my trade.
44 PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
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