Hello everyone! My name is Jered Widmer. I want to take this chance to introduce myself to those of you that I’ve never met and give you a little insight into what makes me tick.
As a child my interest in architecture was piqued with my father’s dream home for our family; he wanted to build a classic geodesic dome. My family took many road trips visiting a few such installations. The geodesic dome is a pretty unique structure, definitely not common for residences; I was fascinated. From those humble beginnings, I spent a lot of time learning about architecture. Instead of coloring books, I would draw up floor plans of my dream house. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania gave me the opportunity to visit Falling Water. I think Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the first well-known architects I really studied. I loved Lego’s too and would spend hours a day, and weeks on end creating architectural masterpieces – never what the boxes instructed me to build.
Aside from architecture, I found myself enthralled with mechanics. At one point during my teen years when our VCR broke, I opened it up, studied the parts and figured out how to fix it. The magic of how all the gears, motors and belts worked in harmony was mesmerizing. I started deconstructing other household appliances, challenging myself to rebuild each. I started building Lego machines, adding rubber bands as belts and creating working gumball machines that required a coin to operate (unless you cheated and took the Lego’s apart). I loved watching Mister Roger’s Neighborhood just so Picture-Picture would show us how crayons were made. The mechanics of assembly lines was amazingly complicated but so fluid and simple.
Fast forward to college and my passion for architecture became intertwined with my engineering sensibility. I decided to major in Architectural Engineering at Penn State, a path that would combine my passions. From that point, I never looked back and in December 2000, I earned my degree with an emphasis in Lighting Design. I joined TLP in January 2001. Over the years, I’ve continued to explore the built environment beyond the walls of the office. I’ve never outgrown my childhood passions and I’ve started to express them through photography. It’s become another real passion in my life because it allows me to combine my love of lighting and architecture. For me, viewing the world through the camera viewfinder forces you to concentrate on smaller, more detailed elements in the world around us. You see things a bit differently and experience them in a new and unique way. Sometimes it pulls things out of context but that can be exciting. I’ve started to use this same concept in the approach to lighting design… it’s all about forcing yourself to view life from multiple aspects. I think it adds a refreshing twist to each project.
In closing, I thought I would share a handful of photos that I’ve captured over the years… some more organic, others more structured. I hope you enjoy. You can visit other photos I’ve taken here.
