About the Artists of Light in the Forest

Learn more about the artists and their work featured in this year's Light in the Forest event. 

Golden Brown 

About Our Installation: We looked above and below to fill this forest with a beautiful glow. Forest Flourescence features native wildflowers found on the forest floor that echo constellations found in the night sky. The designs and materials reflect our enduring commitment to making environmentally conscious artwork. All of our flowers are handmade from recycled materials and illuminated with LED UltraViolet lights. Whether it's cloudy or clear, enjoy your starlit walk in the winter woods!

About Us: Golden Brown was founded in 2009 by David Jarred and Kenton Brett. Artistic vision, creative problem solving, and generating original, meaningful entertainment are core services of our company. Since 2020, Golden Brown has been dedicated full-time to animation and design. We produce artistic content for corporations, musicians, theaters, and arts organizations while providing our incredible skillset for every client’s unique project. 

Kemper Sauce Studios 

About Our Installation: Breath of Life is a digital reincarnation of traditional wind chimes. Walk through the chimes, activating light and sound for an immersive experience. 

About Us: Kemper Sauce Studios is a Cincinnati-based engineering and arts collective with an inventive spirit and a whole list of bad ideas. We build, wire, and code things we think are neat. 

Digital Castaway

About Our Installations: Drawing inspiration from the innate circular symmetry abundant in nature, Luminous Lily is a captivating display that integrates LEDs and real-time generated visuals. Evolving organically over time, much like the blooming of the very flowers that sparked its creation, this exhibit encapsulates the beauty of nature's ever-changing dance. 

Just as fireflies light the evening, the Glowing Grove casts a mesmerizing glow upon the forest canopy. This contemporary reimagining of classical holiday lighting installations harnesses cutting-edge technology to craft stunning animations and intricate designs among the trees. 

About Us: Scott Boeing is a freelance Motion Designer with a background in video and stage lighting. Scott has worked on a variety of light and video installations including projection mapping, arena screen animations, and international music concert visuals. Scott will be programming the real time visualizer and building out the final design and LED layout. Ryan Kast has a background in computer programming and works with his father Kevin Kast to create custom rapid prototypes and find solutions to any problem put in front of them. Ryan will be spearheading the technology side of this project and making sure all our electronics light up and talk to each other.

Daniel Shields

About Our Installation: The lights of fireflies are normally a sign of the warm summer months and are never seen in winter. However, if you look closely, you’ll see a rare event occurring. Here in the cold winter woods at Cincinnati Nature Center, the stars themselves have stepped down from their seats in the heavens and transformed into Starflies. These bright star-flies flutter among the branches to evoke memories of summer days and fill us with inner warmth. 

About Us: Daniel Shields is accidentally an artist but having a great time! Most of Dan’s works are immersive pieces covering or enclosing large outdoor areas, and many installations use UV light to create dazzling effects when night falls. His illuminated works have been featured locally at BLINK in 2019 and 2022, as well as various festivals and events around the county. On a deeper level, Dan seeks to create things that affect people in ways that they’re not fully conscious of while also presenting their conscious brain with displays it might not fully understand. He loves to alter experiences on very primal level by playing with pure raw chemical and electrical perception.

Owens + Crawley 

About Our Installation: Shimmer creates a sense of wonder and enchantment on display with an arrangement of lighted, color-changing orbs suspended from the trees. Using the physics of light filtration, colored translucent acrylic panels are lit from within by color-changing LED lights producing dramatic and sometimes counterintuitive lighting effects. The orbs dance through a coordinated “light show” providing an enchanting viewing experience. 

About Us: If one word had to be chosen to describe the collaborative works of Luke Crawley and Quincy Owens it would be complimentary. Quincy creates abstract work out of a spontaneous, spirit-filled place that taps into universal human connections. Luke deliberately dissects, analyzes, and categorizes segments of sound, light, and visual elements to quantify and rearrange it into new, well-thought-out systems. As collaborators, Quincy and Luke continue to push their own boundaries with new concepts, materials, lights, and sounds.