An earnest passion for creating emanates from Jeff Scott’s portfolio of elaborate light fixtures that he designs and constructs—and the words that he uses to describe them.
“I love to play with lasers, lenses, and light. Twisting it, bending it, reflecting it just to generate interesting shades and shadows,” says Jeff. “It’s just pure joy for me, and it’s fun to use it to entertain others too!”
A Coloradan for 50 years and proud long-time member of the Crested Butte community, Jeff revels in experimenting with the interplay between light and its surroundings to create his unique pieces. Light has played a central role in Jeff’s professional and artistic journey for decades. As an inventor, product designer, and developer, Jeff has helped build and sell a diverse array of light-based goods over the years, from light-up flying discs to dog collars, bicycle spoke lights, and much more.
“For the last 25 years, I’ve been peeling little lighted widgets apart and using the guts in alternative ways,” says Jeff.
A larger interest in art and design has propelled him for even longer. But whether he was designing outdoor spaces with plant materials and natural elements as a landscape architect or designing computer graphics, software, or websites, a desire to create something new, unique, and surprising was a constant.
All of these foundational drivers—combined with his perpetual entrepreneurial nature—helped lead Jeff to opening the Woodpile Lighting & Art Studio, where he creates, showcases, and sells his engaging custom light fixtures today.
Woodpile began to come together when a friend of Jeff’s who owns a wooden puzzle company invited him to use his surplus of wooden scraps for prototyping. Jeff continues to salvage many of the materials that he uses in his lighting pieces, perhaps most notably in the fixtures he creates using bicycle rims, gears, wheels, and other parts.
Jeff’s technical design prowess shines through in many of his focal pieces—light fixtures that are just as much feats of engineering as they are feats of art.
“I’ve been really interested in putting together my fascination with architectural forms and engineering techniques with some of the tools that I love to work with, like laser cutters and welders,” says Jeff.
Just one such example is Jeff’s “Holioli” structure, a heart-shaped wooden fixture with an industrial metal look that is comprised of a grid of both horizontal and vertical tunnels in which no hole within the grid is the same shape. He calls this piece his favorite structure that he’s ever designed.
“Holioli is made up of a series of ravioli shapes, all with irregular holes punched through them,” says Jeff. “Lap-joints, nubs, and notches snap the entire thing together. It’s a mesmerizing three-dimensional puzzle that was so much fun to construct.”
Jeff’s light fixture creations can be found not just in his studio but throughout Crested Butte and other mountain towns as well. He is often commissioned to create pieces for community events and local businesses, from the chandelier made from recycled youth skis that hangs at the entry of the Crested Butte Nordic Center to large-scale lighted features he’s working on for the new Meadow Creek festival grounds in Buena Vista. Jeff will likewise be designing the lighting for multiple wedding and other event venues throughout the area in the coming months, illuminating the small mountain town way of life that he calls his dream.
To stay up-to-date on Jeff’s light-based and other creative endeavors, visit Woodpile.co.