Bringing Faded “Ghost Signs” Back Into The Spotlight

Craig recently collaborated with Matt Cohen, a ghost sign expert, to spotlight the forgotten past of Winnipeg Canada. They used Rosco Image Spots^® and Custom Glass Gobos to bring some of the city's faded ads back to life.

Craig’s work is mainly centered on palimpsests, which are multiple ads painted on top of each other. For the Winnipeg Light Capsule project, he used three, 3000K IP65 Image Spot projectors to illuminate a three-layer ad on the city’s historic “Stobart” building. Craig worked with Rosco to keystone-correct his artwork and create three Custom Black & White Glass Gobos. The result was a series of projections that perfectly matched each painted layer of text. The three Image Spots were programmed to project the gobo images consecutively to enhance each of the ads individually.

“Using projected light is non-damaging and non-invasive,” Craig said as he highlighted the advantages of his ghost sign technique. “It’s an excellent solution to revive multiple layers compared to traditional repainting and restoration.”

When asked why he chose Rosco Image Spots for this project, Craig said: “When thinking of how I could make my Light Capsules installations permanent, I wanted to find a robust solution that was simple and reliable. I also wanted to keep the installation energy efficient and reduce as many fail points as possible. Image Spots only utilize 45 watts of power while still being bright enough for our use case. Moreover, the fixtures needed to withstand hot summers or, in Winnipeg's case, cold winters, which was only possible with an analog method. Because Image Spots are small and compact it also made building a weatherproof box simpler and less expensive.”