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Floating notes: Juneau group College Bound plays in front of the Alaska Folk Fest background Monday. The backdrop includes winged instruments suspended over a mountainscape.The festival board invited her to construct the giant stage backdrop for the main-stage performances at Centennial Hall.
"I love Folk Festival," said Lantz, an archaeology technician with the U.S. Forest Service. "It's kind of fun to have it hanging up there above everybody like that. It was great to see all those kids (the Aurora Strings and Ursa Minor String Ensembles) play the fiddle in front of it (Monday night)."
Lantz worked on her backdrop every weekend for the last month. For the hall's 15-foot-wide stage, she decided she needed more than just a bass flying over mountains. She expanded the design to include a guitar, banjo, mandolin and fiddle - all with wings.
The background of the design is four 3.7-foot wide panels of blue muslin. She painted the mountains and the moon on canvas and glued them both to the muslin with spray adhesive.
The guitar in the backdrop belongs to Lantz, but all the other instruments were loaned to her by friends. She borrowed the banjo from Lindy Dickson. Linda Frame contributed the mandolin. Jen LeRoe gave the fiddle, and Sergei Morosan offered the giant bass.
All of the instruments are suspended from a giant bar with wire wrapped around their necks and end pins. The wings are papier-m‰ché, with the exception of the banjo's, which are cloth.
Morosan put together the lighting for the backdrop. Erik Chadwell, Mike Dilger and Heather Ridgway also assisted with technical issues. Lantz and friends spent about five hours Sunday night installing the backdrop.
"It worked out a lot better than I had anticipated it would," she said. "They all hung perfectly. We didn't need to mess with anything."
Lantz moved to Juneau in 1998. She was the produce manager at Rainbow Foods and spent a session with the Alaska Legislature before moving to the National Forest Service.
Lantz attended a performing arts high school and has experience in set and makeup design. She created posters for the second annual Pelican Boardwalk Boogie and the 2006 Alaska Bird Conference.