About Luke

Luke is a scenic builder for Seattle’s premier theatres, specializing in custom steel, aluminum, and wood fabrication; with experience in rigging, automation, structural engineering, bidding and project management, and setting things on fire.

Wagner’s Dragon

Seattle Opera produced its third cycle of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen in 2001, and it has been put to the stage two more times since then. For “Ring III,” Luke was a part of the crew that built the dragon for Siegfried. The creature sported a 30-foot-long neck with seven fully-universal, articulated joints, supporting a latex skin and carbon fiber head. Six personnel in the base of the dragon...

Sze I: Seattle

Luke was part of a team of fabricators that brought life to Sarah Sze’s “An Equal and Opposite Reaction,” a permanent installation in the foyer of Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, home of Seattle Opera.

Weight and the overall density of this sculpture was a huge concern, so we chose aluminum, which is not the most forgiving material for building sculpture with smaller, flexible pieces like...

Amelia’s Airplane

Luke led the team to create a replica Lockheed Electra aircraft for Seattle Opera’s 2010 debut of Amelia.

The challenge with this project is staying true to the original 3-D object while making it feasible for the stage. Though CAD programs can deal with a 3-D image, they can’t plot material thickness and how that interacts on a curve, so you have to have the instinct to blend it in an organic way while...