Designing Light with ID Professor Lyn Godley

Industrial Design professor Lyn Godley’s latest solo exhibition, LUCID SHADOWS was recently exhibited at Philadelphia’s Hot Bed Gallery. Over 60 of her new lighting creations made their debut, bathing the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery in pulsating, luminescent pools of color.

As with her light exploration of the past 20 years, Godley’s new work defies rigid categorization, tight boundaries, and easy definitions. Materials are pushed, folded, pierced, curled, heated, stressed – all with delicate adjustments in response to light’s interactions. The fierce pace with which Godley investigates the medium results in dynamic outcomes, grounded, as always, in a love of making and material manipulation.

“Color, color, color, pattern, and shape” were words once used to describe Godley’s furniture, home furnishings and jewelry created under the Godley-Schwan label with her business partner and husband, the late Lloyd Schwan. The groundbreaking design company, active from 1984 to 2000, is credited (along with 2 others) for setting the tone for the American Art Furniture Movement generated mainly by New York innovators at the time. Godley began her career as a maker and the tactile quality of manipulating materials remains tantamount.

Godley’s grounding in design is enriched by her research into the effects of light and its potential health outcomes. She states: “By merging the power of light with the principles of UX design we can create environments that have measurable positive impact on viewers.”