VORTEX LIGHTING

INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED LIGHTING DESIGNER AND FINE ARTIST WITH A CAREER SPANNING ALL ASPECTS OF CREATING WITH LIGHT

PRINCIPAL AND FOUNDER OF VORTEX LIGHTING IN LOS ANGELES, CA

Anne Militello’s career began on small theater and concert stages in both San Francisco and New York City, where she attended Polakov’s Studio and Forum of Stage Design in Greenwich Village. She worked extensively in New York Off, Off Broadway and experimental theater with groups such as La Mama ETC, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Mabou Mines, the Wooster Group, and the Squat Theater, and was awarded the prestigious “OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Lighting for Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway Theater” early on in her career.

Noted theater work includes original productions with renowned directors Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, and David Lynch. She designed the Broadway debut performance of Robert DeNiro in Cuba and His Teddy Bear. Her work in opera is noteworthy for Christopher Alden’s production of The Flying Dutchman as well as the debut of Dulce Rosa for the Los Angeles Opera conducted by Placido Domingo.

She has designed touring concert productions for Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Robert Plant, KD Lang, Lou Reed, The Decemberists, Neil Young and Pearl Jam – concerts seen at international venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, O2 Stadium, Royal Albert Hall and The White House. Other music designs include Here But I’m Gone – A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield at Lincoln Center featuring The Roots, Sinead O’Connor, and Mavis Staples, and the televised Return to Sin City – A Graham Parsons Tribute featuring Keith Richards, Norah Jones, and Lucinda Williams.

Among her numerous architectural projects are original integrated light art and media installations that continue to grace several buildings in New York City, including the New York Historical Society and Sheraton Four Points Time Square. Her elegantly dynamic light façade of the New 42nd Street Studios in Times Square received the highest honor from the IESNA in the form of the "Paul Waterbury Award of Distinction.”

She has created many commissioned public art light displays and designs. Most noteworthy was the large scale Light Cycles, commissioned by Brookfield Properties for the World Financial Center in downtown NYC, a 150 foot high moving light sculpture strung across the glass arch of the Winter Garden Plaza – a dancing beacon of light visible across the Hudson River. Also in New York, the Italian fashion house Missoni enlisted her to create a window of light for their flagship boutique on Madison Avenue. Her solo show Radiate- Not Fade Away, shown in New York’s Modern Culture Gallery, was a well-reviewed art installation of ethereal light projections.

During a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering she designed various Disneyland attractions before moving on to working with Universal Studios on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, which earned her “Themed Lighting Designer of the Year” honors from LDI.

Currently she is the head of the Masters of Fine Arts Lighting Design Program at California Institute of the Arts. She is a sought after educator and public speaker who has taught and lectured at institutions such as the Light Academy in Florence, Italy, Sci-Arc and the Mind Studio at Caltech in Los Angeles, the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, the Illumination Symposium in Mexico City, and the PLDA Workshops in Goa, India. She has been the keynote speaker at LDI’s Master Classes In Lighting in Las Vegas.

She was featured in a BBC documentary Interesting People – Interesting Jobs, and her life and work have been frequently profiled in various newspapers and magazines as well as many professional trade publications.