I was having a little difficulty brainstorming a Fourth-of-July-themed visual arts feature story.

I was having a little difficulty brainstorming a Fourth-of-July-themed visual arts feature story. But then it hit me: Fourth of July is one of those holidays when Americans get together to gaze at an ancient art, musical in its fleeting nature and booming, irregular rhythms, but primarily visual in its lines of brilliant colors and striking formations. The black sky is the canvas. The paint: fireworks.
"I'm glad to hear you refer to it as a visual art," said Mike Niedzwecki of Zambelli Fireworks, a national pyrotechnics and fireworks display company with corporate headquarters in New Castle, Penn. "The audience lots of time doesn't see it that way, but that's exactly what it is. We try to paint a picture, and go for that visual impact by using different colors and effects and layers."
Niedzwecki is Zambelli's project manager for South Carolina and Georgia. This year, the city of Wilmington and USS North Carolina Battleship contracted with Zambelli to provide the main attraction of its Battleship Blast celebration on July 4. The fireworks display is viewable from the downtown riverfront, and the first firecracker fires from the Battleship at 9:05 p.m. (See sidebar for info on more fireworks displays.)
It's what's inside that first firework's shell that determines its appearance. A cross section of a shell reveals "stars" of various colors and shapes – some spherical, some square, some cylindrical – arranged in the same pattern the firework forms when it bursts into the sky.
"Basically, if you see a circle effect in the sky, it's a group of what we call stars," Niedzwecki said. "The stars are laid out inside the shell in the same pattern that you want to see in the sky. When it explodes, it explodes with equal force in all directions, so the circle inside the shell forms a circle in the sky. It's not exactly rocket science."
So if you open up the shell of a smiley face firework, you'll find a circle of yellow, ball-shaped stars surrounding two green star eyes, a mouth formed by six red stars arched in a grin, and a round little nose of powdery black bursting charge.
It's variety that keeps a crowd captivated for the length of a firework show, Niedzwecki said. Assorted shell sizes burst in an array of colors and effects: orange peonies, purple dahlias and rainbow chrysanthemums are accompanied by yellow weeping willows, green palm trees and blue and red renderings of Saturn. A four-inch shell might be launched above a three-inch shell, adding a layered dimension to the sky.
But what about the order and the timing in which the fireworks are launched? Is there some pyrotechnic maestro aboard the battleship attempting to paint the perfect picture in the sky while calling out shell after shell with resolute timing, pausing to build that it-can't-be-over-already tension and then teasing with a premature barrage of rockets to fake out all the finale forecasters? Is the show premeditated?
"No, not really," Niedzwecki said.
Most Independence Day displays, including the one downtown Wilmington viewers will see this Fourth of July, aren't what Niedzwecki would consider a "choreographed show," in which colors and effects are synched up to a musical track. Many of the shows put on by Zambelli contain music as an enhancement, but some are actually painstakingly set to music, with fireworks timed to burst along with specific lyrics. According to a story in Popular Mechanics, it can take two hours of planning for Zambelli to design one minute of firework choreography.
For a non-choreographed show, it's a little simpler, with "a firing every two-and-a-half to three seconds, with an average of two to three shells in the air per firing," Niedzwecki said. "Certainly, the number one rule of fireworks is you don't want a black sky, so there's gotta be something going on all the time."

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