Artist paints with fireworks, using sky, lake as his canvas

Got a fireworks question? Then master pyrotechnic designer Eric Tucker is your man. For the 10th straight year, Tucker choreographed tonight's WaMu Family 4th show at Lake Union, one of the largest displays in the country.

"It is a chain of pyrotechnic events," based on the communication of heat, Tucker said.

It's also an intricately planned production, from the worldwide trips Tucker makes to select his fireworks, to the computer-aided design that takes into account the Lake Union vantage points, to the delivery and storage of the fireworks — midlake on a barge.

"In Seattle, the first heat source that's applied is an electronic igniter — 12 volts, which transfers heat to a lift charge, or black powder," Tucker said. A computer is connected to that starter.

"That charge blows the shell out of the mortar, just like a bullet coming out of a gun."

Although he wrote the script, Tucker, who works for California-based Pyro Spectaculars, won't be here to watch tonight's show. That job goes to Jon Berson, who's been the pyrotechnician of the Lake Union show for seven years.

Tucker will be across the country on Boston's Esplanade for the famous Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, which hundreds of thousands of people view live each year. It will be broadcast tonight at 10 on KIRO Channel 7. "That's the one I physically have to do," Tucker said.

He is the architect behind three Fourth of July shows this year: Boston, Houston and Seattle.

"There's a couple of things that are impressive about Lake Union," Tucker, 53, said by phone from his home in Rialto, Calif. "Lake Union's one of the most beautiful fireworks settings ... and we always have beautiful weather for some reason. I lived in Seattle, so I know what an anomaly that is.

"It's a 360-degree view. You've got the reflective qualities of the water," a great match for his designs.

Tucker's fireworks tableau is "vaguely European," he said. "I was trained in France originally, and the French and the Italians began to use a lot of Roman candles, or barrages from the ground, and they would build a tableau or picture" on top of these.

Tucker brought that sensibility to fireworks accompanying rock-band European tours, for groups including the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Black Sabbath and AC/DC.

With his background in theater and music, Tucker's intent is to make art, to paint the sky. Computer technology helps him do that.

He took the shape of Lake Union into consideration when he designed the show. With the wide frontage, a lot of effects come up from the water, and Lake Union often acts as a mirror.

"We stretch our productions out wide so that it includes a right and a left, not just an up and a down," he said. "I feel we are trying to tell a story to music to physically carry the audience ... so listening to the music is half of the story. It's critically important to the show."

Tonight's Family 4th kicks off with the Jimi Hendrix version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Other songs played in time to the fireworks range from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to parts of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The music, like the show, was produced by One Reel, a local nonprofit arts-presenting group.

The computer program Tucker uses allows his team to control the fireworks within 1/100th of a second.

"Everything is interpretive and everything happens for a musical reason," Tucker said. "If the music were to give us a trill down the keyboard, then we can reproduce that by running the effects down the barge."

Tucker traveled the world to get the goods for this year's show, and he's been saving up some American fireworks, "very large shells that simply aren't made anymore" and burst into blooms of chartreuse and aqua. Tonight's fireworks also come from Taiwan, China, Japan, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

"We also are using nautical devices this year that actually shoot out and make their effects on the water," Tucker said.

His database boasts more than 3,000 effects, not including the various sizes they come in.

"It's kind of a paint storage room, you know, you go and pick your colors and your textures."

Moving hazardous materials, Tucker said, "is at best tricky these days."

"The pyrotechnics themselves weigh 12,000 pounds," he said. For safety, "we bring them directly onto the barges and out to the water so it doesn't sit around anywhere."

Tucker misses doing the hands-on work at Lake Union.

"Seattle is a great audience," he said. "People have that kind of nothing's-gonna-shock-them, 'bring it on' attitude."

Judy Chia Hui Hsu: 206-464-3315 or jhsu@seattletimes.com