The Art of Illusion: Storytelling and Fantasy

ARGYLE - The drive goes on for miles, deep in the heart of God’s country.
The landscape is speckled with half-stemmed stalks that stand in the middle of naked cornfields, creaky redwood barns worn by time, and cow-dappled fields alongside dairy farms whose long, rolling hills tumble into the horizon waiting for harvest.

It’s a long way from 12th Street and Avenue B in Manhattan.

David Thomas Lloyd and Christopher Detmer relocated from New York City to the rural farmlands of upstate New York 30 years ago, where they partnered up to form
Adirondack Scenic Inc., not a household name to be sure, but chances are if you’ve ventured anywhere outside your door in the past 20 years, you’ve seen their work.

What they created in the company’s Argyle studios has been displayed in Ripley’s
Believe it or Not Museum in Hollywood to the Hard Rock Café in Dubai, from doing the production and design for Six Flags’ “Batman” to the Washington Opera’s “Carmen”
and collaborations in the visual scenery staged by everyone from Ringling Bros. &
Barnum & Bailey Circus to the Rolling Stones.

“The biggest problem was getting people to realize where we were,” said Lloyd.
“The telephone was our life line and if the lines went down - as they occasionally did in Warrensburg in the 1970s - then that was it. There was no Internet at that time;
There was no fax - it was just wires and smoke signals.”

Inside the massive 120,000-square-foot building, colorful swatches hang from the walls
inside the building’s main lobby. One room holds western props and Indian headdresses. Blueprints and draft designs mark another.
The hangar-sized production areas buzz with saws, droning machines and the hollow clanking
of hammers. In a quieter area, others are delicately sanding, cutting and painting.

There is a staff of 85, a variety of acoustical experts, theater consultants and other
specialists collaborate in the various stages of design and development for the company.
By the time a piece is completed, many hands have been a part of the work.

“We get a flurry of activity in the spring from people like Aerosmith calling up and saying
‘I need a backdrop for my tour,’ things along those lines,” Lloyd said.
“We also get quite a bit of work for amusement parks, as well as more museum-quality
pieces for shopping malls, restaurants and retail places.”

The company has just finished three attractions for Universal Studios in Japan and a pair
of big blue buses are being prepped for the Main Street Parade at Six Flags in New Jersey.

“It’s all based on some sort of storytelling,” Lloyd said. “It’s really about communicating some fantasy to somebody.”

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, 2002.