This Week, I Made ...
Week 005 | Design sketches for a wire + light exploration
This week I went back to the wire.
As I was working with it more, I kept noticing how structural it is. It holds its shape, but it’s also surprisingly organic. I could bend it, carve it, and push it around until it felt right. It’s rigid and flexible at the same time, which I really love as a material.
At the same time, this idea began to overlap with real life. I’m currently in the middle of a gut renovation of my apartment and working closely with an architect. Naturally, we’ve been talking a lot about lighting. I found myself spending time looking at light fixtures and thinking about how they shape a space.
That’s when it clicked.
Professionally, I spent two decades as a 3D lighting artist in the digital world. Over the years, I also dipped into making physical lights — workshops here and at home explorations — but it never really went anywhere. Mostly because I didn’t have a use case. I wasn’t trying to produce lights or turn it into a thing. It was just curiosity.
But now I do have a use case!!
If I’m already looking for lights for my home, how amazing would it be to design one myself and actually live with it? That felt really personal — and honestly pretty exciting.
I also kept thinking back to the wire sculptures I saw at MoMA and how much I loved the way light interacted with them, especially the shadows they cast. None of those pieces were actual light fixtures, but the way light moved through the wire really stuck with me.
That got me thinking: how could wire become part of a light?
One thing I kept coming back to was diffusion. Wire alone could feel harsh as a light source. So my brain started going toward mixed materials. That’s where my 3D roots came back in. I started imagining combining wire with a 3D-printed form — something translucent, maybe a soft white — that could diffuse the light and balance out the structure.
Once that idea landed, I started sketching.
All of the sketches you’ll see here were done on the subway or in a cafe. I love finding those in-between moments to think and draw, which is why I always carry a digital notebook with me. Some sketches explore simple shapes.
Others lean more organic or playful. Most of them are about how wire and a printed form might work together as a single object.
I’m not sure yet where this will land. It does feel a little daunting to take on with everything else going on, but what’s motivating is that this isn’t abstract — it could turn into something real that I see every day in my home.
Next steps will probably be narrowing down a few directions, modeling some ideas in 3D, printing small test forms, and continuing to prototype with wire.
For now, this week was about thinking, sketching, and letting the idea take shape.
This week, I made…