For The Holidays - Integrated Technologies Corporation

Snow People Country Display at the Albuquerque Biopark

Download the snow people village maps in PDF format: Click Here
Download the snow people village maps in JPEG format: Map 1, Map 2, Map 3

December 2009

Snow People Country is presented for everyone to enjoy throughout the Christmas Holiday Season. This display originally started in 1995, as a table-top collection of acrylic snowmen that has continued to grow to this day. Since the initial marketed snowmen were hollow, the idea of illuminating these beautiful acrylic pieces with fiber optics came naturally as a concept.

In November of 2007, the first public display was set up at the Main City Library in downtown Albuquerque and it was 16 ft. long by 8 ft. wide. The display was such a success, that it was recommended that it be moved to a more visible location so that it could be enjoyed by more. It was in 2008 that the City of Albuquerque offered to build a modular structure that could house the display throughout the Christmas Holiday Season and the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens, which hosts the spectacular River of Lights, was the logical spot.

The Snow People Country display now is 48 ft. long by 8 ft. wide and displays almost 2,000 acrylic and a few real glass pieces that are illuminated by fiber optic illuminators and/or LED lighting. The finished display is comprised of 12 – 4 ft. x 8 ft. rolling tables that are connected to each other, but transported individually. To illuminate this 48 ft. long display, 12 illuminators and 4,550 ft. of 3.0mm plastic fiber optic cable are utilized to bring the rotating colors to life, once the sun sets. It takes 3 people and over 120 hours alone, to string the fiber optic cables to each figurine. The LED lighting requires a 2-person crew, working underneath the tables, an additional 60 hours to wire the different wattages to transformers located under each individual table, plus a 2-person crew above the tables to assist in stringing the copper wire from above the table to the crews below the tables. From beginning to end it takes approximately 6 weeks to set up this display before transporting to the BioPark. Needless to say, it is quite an enterprise.

Here are some pictures to show the construction of this display and the final product. We also have a map that over time will be more complete in showing what is going on in Snow People Country.

Patty Salopek Kinney
President
Integrated Technologies Corporation

Here are some of the other images from this year and past years. Please click on an image to see a larger view.

Happy Holidays to all our clients, new and old and all of our website visitors!