By Kelsey Knott Photos by Matt Johnson
Perhaps you’ve visited the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience downtown, or the Kentucky Derby Museum at the track. Maybe you’ve been as far as the Eternal Gandhi Museum Houston in Texas or the American Civil War Museum in Virginia. In each of these experiences, Solid Light is responsible for entrancing visitors with award-winning, thoughtfully crafted storytelling.
Chris Moizer, Chief Operating Officer, began as a fabricator in the shop ten years ago before moving up through project management and into his current role four years ago. Chris shares with us what makes Solid Light’s work meaningful and how they bring magic to life.
Tell me about Solid Light’s start. What first inspired this kind of work?
Our CEO and founder, Cynthia Torp, started the company 25 years ago out of her attic. She had a background in commercial advertising and a very successful career, but her passion wasn’t being fulfilled, so she started Solid Light to do something to add positivity to the world and look at storytelling differently. We just celebrated 25 years.I’m inspired by doing cool things in a new, different way every time. While we are experts at storytelling through various means and methods, every client, every project, and every story are unique, so we have to find new and interesting ways to bring that alive for their audience.
You’ve said that the innovative spirit of Solid Light inspires you. What else influences or inspires those involved in creating the unique spaces or experiences?
The team comes from various backgrounds. We have designers from a traditional exhibit design background and designers who were philosophy majors. Some fabricators come from traditional construction backgrounds, but most of them come from theater, fine furniture-making, or creative backgrounds. The diversity they bring with them allows us to think differently and innovate across the spectrum. In our industry, we’re not just an exhibit design company or just a fabrication company–we’re all of those things, and the strength of our team’s backgrounds allows us to do this and even more.
Each of our clients challenges us in different ways. For example, The American Printing House for the Blind’s endeavor to open the most accessible museum in the world with The Dot Experience challenged our understanding right out of the gate. Often, when you think of a creative person, their world is highly visual, right? It immediately challenged us to think: How do we communicate the story? How do we communicate experiences and spaces through visual methods, but also equally through non-visual methods? It opened up the challenge of reaching a broader, more accessible audience.
At the foundation of Solid Light is that “people share a passion for great stories.” What is the most important aspect of this storytelling process when embarking on a design project?
For every story, from a visitor’s standpoint, you have to be able to connect with what you’re experiencing. To make the experienceor the story interesting to the people coming through that space, you’ve got to have historical and personal context–How does it affect me or how can I see myself in that story? We could tell stories on a purely factual basis, but that wouldn’t be very interesting to the majority of audiences. We can do wildly entertaining and immersive experiences, but if they’re not rooted in the story, they’re just exhibits–they don’t last once you leave. We want the work we’re producing to be meaningful.
Is there something you wish more people knew about the work Solid Light does?
Locally, I wish more people knew we were here. Whenever we bring clients, community members, or stakeholders through, especially local folks not in the museum industry, there’s always amazement that we do this in Louisville. We’ve grown over the last 25 years and are becoming more well-known in the community, but we look to broaden not just within the local museum community, but to local businesses and civic communities. We’ve done government projects, visitor centers, for-profit visitor centers, and education centers. We love to work and show off our work locally. Our staff loves to be able to take their families and kids to the places where they get to see the cool experience, and they also get to say, ‘I did that.’
What do you hope people gain from experiencing your unique spaces?
We hope visitors go into a space expecting one thing and leave with something new and a desire to enact change. We’ve got three tenants: elevate, amaze, and transform. We want our audiences to come in and leave transformed in their way of thinking, have experienced an elevated experience, and be amazed at what they’ve learned out of that. We like to tell the full story, getting at the crux of what the story is and not skimming across the top of it, which provides a lot of great opportunities to find newstories, find new voices, and tell the stories of people who existed but haven’t had their voices elevated in the vernacular. We hope our audiences realize history and stories are complex and interconnected–it’s not just what was presented in history books or through movies. There are so many opportunities for stories that exist if you dig deeper.
What’s next for Solid Light?
The Dot Experience will open in 2026 with a national and international presence, telling the stories of individuals who are blind or deaf through their voice and highlighting how they accommodate and adapt in a world designed without accessibility in mind. The Dot Experience hopes to be the most accessible museum in the world–from new ways to experience artifacts outside of the glass, all the way to the maps and orientation tools that help visitors navigate the space. It has such a great message about humanity: Accepting and meeting people where they are and being accessible to everyone. We’re proud of the work we’re doing and the way The American Printing House for the Blind is challenging us to work and think differently.
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