What Happened?
At the beginning of May, I was almost positive that I was going to lose my studio due to the covid shutdown. Plans were set in motion to start paring down equipment, and other parts were earmarked for storage. The most difficult element to work out though was what the hell to do with the 500lbs of aluminum and acrylic that makes up my Lumination set? I couldn’t move it in pieces, it obviously didn’t fit in my car… so storage solutions became the focus.
I searched around for affordable options like used hardware or lumber carts, but nothing was going to be take all of the components in one go - except for a custom solution.
Enter Matt Pickering, the name and talent behind Pickering Woodworks. I contacted Matt to see if he had any thoughts on creating custom roadie-style cases for the hardware. He immediately pulled in James Ravenhill, a ludicrously talented local artist and designer, and together they had this drawn up in under 48 hours:
The Beasties
No big deal. Just another five hundred pounds of lumber and hardware… times two!
Seriously tho. They had these babies figured out faster than I could even articulate my gratitude or amazement. Drawers and pegs and locking mechanisms - all of which I hadn’t even considered! I immediately pulled the trigger and ordered up a pair of cases that would hold all eight stage sections and the supporting hardware. Shoutout to my man Ian Pond for putting some hours into creating these as well. Much love.
On one occasion, I got to come and help with the build:
half of an exterior built
Matt for scale
nearly touching the ceiling!
But there’s no ramp on the loading dock…
So after driving the cases from Pickering’s to the studio in a Sprinter Van (with no lift gate), we realize that we’re going to have to bring all of the stage pieces down to the loading dock manually and fill the cases…
The only time I asked anyone to break quarantine for me during the first months was to move this stuff into storage. There was no way to move all of this myself, and the timelines weren’t looking good then either… Shoutout to Ian, Joel and my brother Dan for throwing down and helping move these during Q. Seriously, you guys are amazing and I’m eternally grateful.
my brother Dan helping load out most of the stages at once
luckily the van also had a side door too. we were able to load both cases at once without taking them out of the van.
apparently we still play the Icing game, so I definitely had to slam this afterward… thanks, Joel!
Where to put them?
There was still the question of where do they live for the time being? Thanks to the generosity of Brian Smith and Cappuccino Musical Theatre, the stage cases, all loaded up, now have a home in a storage locker, fittingly nestled amongst thousands of theatrical props.
These cases are gorgeous and its almost criminal that they went straight from the shop into storage. I’m going to make some post-relaunch plans to bring them back into the studio, don’t you worry. Everything is a step at a time right now :)
