Longest Movie Night of the Year
Solstice Experience Box 2024
Each year, I design a custom gift box inviting recipients to lean into the Winter Solstice season. Playing on themes of light, coziness, intention, and communal gathering, each annual box has a unique theme and a mix of handmade, local, and carefully curated items.
For 2024, the theme was “Longest Movie Night of the Year,” an invitation to embrace short winter days as a prime opportunity for activities best enjoyed in darkness. Winter holiday traditions emphasize storytelling and a celebration of the return of light, themes vibrantly expressed in the flickering screens and moving scenes of the cinema.
Winter is also an excellent time to slow down, so to incorporate a handmade element, I created a “slow cinema” experience using an early optical novelty called a stereoscope. Two nearly identical images, when viewed through a special analog device, produce a 3D effect.
I designed and prototyped a unique fold-flat stereoscope design, and produced the final object on my laser cutter at my Saint Paul studio.
Solstice is a time for gathering with family, friends, and neighbors. To foster the ultimate movie night gathering, I included several scene-setting goodies. Items were locally sourced where possible, including popcorn from Smude’s in Pierz, MN, and immersive “popcorn and cola” candles from Minneapolis-based Frostbeard Studio.
The theater theme was rounded out with treats like classic Haribo cola gummies, plus an enamel pin nod to a cinema-savvy holiday film.
Graphic elements for the box were designed by me, including pinback cards featuring an anaglyphic 3D design (an image technique that functions similarly to a sterescope), and a logo token with “Admit One” on the reverse to be used as a challenge coin or movie night memento.
I also sourced public-domain stereograph images and formatted them for my portable stereoscopes, prioritizing images of winter scenes, celestial bodies, and compelling lighting. These, too, were locally-sourced where possible, and include a scene of the first Saint Paul Winter Carnival in 1886.
Other boxes have included a throwback Nickelodeon 90s box, interactive I-Spy boxes, and a kitschy Christmas treat box inspired by old Swiss Colony catalogs.
