Cynthia Torp is President of Solid Light, a full-service firm that designs and builds exhibits and visitor experiences that engage, enlighten, and inspire. Champions of their client’s vision, they help bring powerful stories to life through comprehensive, start-to-finish content, design, fabrication and installation services.
Everyone has a story. Tell us how you knew you wanted to enter the design field. What was your “light bulb” moment?
Although I always knew I wanted to work in the design field, the “light bulb” moment that affected my thinking – for my design work and in the rest of my life – was in college. I’d taken at least five art history classes in college, but then I enrolled in one where I learned about the great women artists of the world. All the other classes had left out the women. This class changed my life: It was my first lesson in how the same story can change dramatically depending on the point of view it’s told from. It’s something I keep in mind to this day with Solid Light’s exhibit design work.
Please briefly explain the development of the Sagamore Spirit Distillery visitor experience?
The developers of Sagamore Spirit commissioned Solid Light to help bring the Sagamore Spirit brand to life and to design an immersive visitor experience for the distillery in Baltimore that would inspire a restoration and renaissance of Maryland’s forgotten heritage of crafting American rye whiskey. To develop the experience, our research team found historical documents and images, and spoke to historians to understand what distilling in Maryland looked and felt like before Prohibition.
