Even though my father is an electrician, he used to be a lighting designer and salesman.
It was the commercial lighting company that gave him the contact who set him up with his first job as an electrician’s apprentice.
His favorite part of being an electrician involved installing lights in both commercial and residential spaces. Nowadays he does mostly fiber optics and data line work, but he hasn’t forgotten his years in the lighting business before becoming an electrician when I was a baby. He said that it was always his preference when working in residences and commercial construction projects to do the lighting installation work. That’s what he did until he was forced to go into data line work because there was more work in that field when he was laid off during the Great Recession in 2008. By 2010 he was busy with his new job at a new company laying fiber optic cables for security systems and data networks. However, he still has a love for lights, and often shows me cool light fixture designs that he finds on the internet. One recent light fixture project he showed me consisted of elaborate light fixtures that are made out of rebar tie wire and rebar wire ties. The rebar is bent into the shape of light fixtures and the wire ties hold everything together. They might seem a little ridiculous, but I love practical items made out of steel rebar. It’s a cool industrial look that is hard to mimic with other materials. Why not utilize rebar for things beyond simple concrete reinforcement?