In the sea of more than 50,000 students at UF, five students are enrolled in a unique program very few universities have access to.
UF’s Master of Fine Arts lighting design program is one of just a handful of universities that looks at lighting as a technique to be used beyond the theater stage, said third-year MFA lighting design student Bryan Lussier.
“There are a lot of programs that focus on theater and only theater,” said Lussier, 28. “What makes UF’s program very unique is that we’re involved in the museum lighting, we’re involved with architectural lighting.”
Essentially, UF examines the next step of lighting, which makes people think about the environments they’re in, Lussier said.
The program is headed by professor Stan Kaye, whose background spans more than 30 years of experience in both academia and the lighting industry.
The aim of the program is to bring theater lighting to the masses while maintaining a focus on the fundamentals of lighting design.
Students in the three-year program practice lighting design in a variety of settings in order to gain experience outside of theater production.
Several students recently worked with Kaye and Luxam’s lighting company to develop and install a customized lighting system in the new Cofrin Asian Art Wing at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.
“We look at how science and art work so we can try to understand how our art is interpreted by the population,” Lussier said.
He said the program is about pushing the art forward in an age when people are constantly looking down at their phones instead of looking at the world around them.
“When we talk about innovation, entrepreneurship, international work and the fusion of art and science and technology, this is it,” Kaye said.
