17 - Light Voices #4 – Katrina Matejcik

00:00:03: Johanna Stückler: Welcome to Licht hören, a podcast about light, lighting and the people behind it. Here we explore this fascinating field from education and daily practice to how we imagine and shape its future. Hello and welcome to Licht hören and our new series where we talk to the people in the lighting community. Today I'm talking to Katarina Matetic from New York City. Hi and welcome.

00:00:29: Katrina Matejcik: Hi, thank you for having me.

00:00:31: Johanna Stückler: Katrine, who are you and what do you do in the lighting community?

00:00:35: Katrina Matejcik: I'm an emerging lighting designer, also a professor in lighting design.

00:00:40: Johanna Stückler: So I learned that you actually do a lot as a lighting designer, as a freelancer in a studio and education. How did you end up there? Is there a path?

00:00:53: Katrina Matejcik: I guess my path isn't as clear of a trajectory, but ever since I went into graduate school, I knew that I wanted to be in the classroom and continue to be a teacher and share what I'm learning and to cultivate a sense of curiosity around a subject that is so beautiful.

00:01:19: Johanna Stückler: So you actually do three different things. Two of them are pretty similar, but do you have a specific topic? Is it more residential or how do you direct with light in that field?

00:01:30: Katrina Matejcik: Yeah, so within my lighting design practice, I work partially at a firm, Loop Lighting, where I help move the bigger projects forward that are sometimes like hospitality or larger scale residential, corporate interiors. And then I have my own practice, metagic design as well, that I have a few residential projects and have done galleries and more of a smaller scale.

00:02:02: Johanna Stückler: So I'm just trying to imagine what you really do. Do you pick out the luminaires? Do you do the calculations? Do you just give them a consultancy?

00:02:11: Katrina Matejcik: Maybe I guess within the loop practice we can come up with a whole package and it can be really detailed of picking the luminaires, making sure everything is up to code. Then sometimes it's just this gallery has to be perfect and I help with the layout, the proof and calculate that. But maybe it's only one fixture. Some residential clients really are hands-on with the decorative fixtures and you're supporting creating their home. So it varies by project and sometimes it's just a simple calculation.

00:02:52: Johanna Stückler: It sounds like nothing is the same.

00:02:54: Katrina Matejcik: Even if I'm teaching the same class another year, it's a different batch of students. And I'm always reworking it as well of how can this be better and smoother and spark more ideas and creativity. Yeah, I feel really lucky to be in this place. I'm actually loving my job.

00:03:08: Johanna Stückler: This is such a valuable thing. If there's something else you're really proud of, be also a project. No matter.

00:03:22: Katrina Matejcik: Yeah, so thinking back to my professional practice and a moment where I realized, I am actually a lighting designer. There's always this imposter syndrome around it. Was a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. And the retrospective was on Paul Kleiker. And I helped with this installation called The Saints. And it's a sound and video installation that shows the 1996 World Cup final between England and West Germany. And the final is presented on a screen in a really large room that takes a minute to walk across with like double height ceilings. So there's this procession happening within the room. And outside of the video, it's a sound installation where they have the cheering and recording of the game itself. Within that space, I helped them make sure it was really brightly illuminated and like contrasted the rest of the gallery. So it almost felt like you were floating when you walked through this nearly shadowless space. And towards this small screen, there was this roar of applause. I set up the scene and I proved this and like can look at the calculations and to have that literal acoustical celebration, within that moment in a established museum was one of my first like pinch-free moments. Wow. Yeah. To see it all come together.

00:05:06: Johanna Stückler: This sounds amazing. You said you're an architect. Do you want to explain more? Like how did you actually really end up there? Like, did you ask people like, hi, I want to educate people about lighting design or, but first you had to do your master's degree at Parsons to become a teacher. Would you like to share a little bit of where did you start and how did it come that you love lighting?

00:05:33: Katrina Matejcik: Yeah, I guess those are two passions of mine, education and lighting. I want to always be learning and supporting that pursuit as well. And both of my parents taught at a university level. My dad was a industrial engineering professor for over 30 years. So I grew up with that exchange of knowledge being just the norm of like what's expected if you have an expertise to share it. And when I was little, when I first found out what an architect was as a second grader, I immediately was like, that's what I want to do. I made a paper house in school and was like, I'm gonna be an architect slash artist. That was what I was saying for a decade until I stepped into undergrad and started an architecture degree at the University of Minnesota. And when I was at the university, I was trying everything like product design classes, urban studies, studio art, but a foundation in architecture. But I took a daylighting course and seeing how daylight brought life to the built environment and allowed buildings to visually breathe and change with the arc of the day and really understanding that and calculating it and tracing it and watching shadows really brought me to understand the connection between architecture and light. And then I worked in some theatrical settings as well and seeing the controlled lighting situation and how you can manipulate that to tell a story and it becomes this undercurrent that really carries what's happening on stage in a way that elevates it and becomes this sort of magic behind the obvious.

00:07:44: Johanna Stückler: As an educator, you are really close to the next generation of lighting designers. Is there something you would recommend to somebody who is just starting out, not knowing what to do or that lighting is actually a field?

00:08:00: Katrina Matejcik: Yeah, for people who are just starting out in their design careers and maybe are just hearing about lighting, I'd encourage you to connect with a lighting designer because this is an emerging field. Not everyone comes at it from the same path. There are these graduate courses that can lead you in that direction, but I know a lot of lighting designers who spent decades doing theatrical lighting or came in with an architecture background and somehow connected to a lighting design firm and their skills carried over. So even if you don't have formal lighting design training, connecting with a lighting designer might lead you to unexpected opportunities as well.

00:09:00: Johanna Stückler: What fascinates people most when you explain your job?

00:09:05: Katrina Matejcik: That it exists. A lot of times people have never heard of a lighting designer or automatically think theater. But when they actually step back and think about what a lighting designer is and the power of light in our built environment, you see this aha moment and been immediately followed with questions of what that means and so many personal experiences too of lighting that was a magical point in their life or one that's really frustrating and that they recognize a need to change. And in a way, even stating that lighting design is a profession gives people this understanding that there is agency around light and it should be there to support their lives.

00:10:08: Johanna Stückler: Katrina, I'm very happy you are here and I hope we hear much more from you and that you teach a lot more students at Parsons.

00:10:18: Katrina Matejcik: Thank you.

00:10:19: Johanna Stückler: Are you thinking about lighting as a career? You can study it, practice and theory in Germany, UK, whole Europe, US or globally. Pick a tech route or a design route, bachelor, master, post-grad. Leave us a comment and we are also happy to share some programs in the show notes. You have been listening to Lichthören, a joint project of the Lighting Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Thank you for listening. You'll find ways to connect with us through the comments or in the show notes.