News Summary

SPRINGFIELD — Their clients include the Ohio Funeral Directors Association and a group of Columbus attorneys.

Someone planning a swingers convention called to enlist their services, too — and thankfully never called back.

But if there's a corporate party that Rick Benning and David McDargh of Ambience were meant to decorate, it's one thrown by the insurance industry.

After all, their biggest creation to date — a 12-foot-high, 150-foot-wide facade of a 1950s Kroger — could completely collapse on someone during social hour and they'd be unhurt.

Zero liability!

Provided, of course, they don't choke on a cocktail wiener on the way down.

The Springfield company, which specializes in crafting "event environments," regularly gives its clients the old theatrical razzle-dazzle.

If it looks real and looks heavy, it's probably not.

It's really just skillfully sculpted Styrofoam, carved from a giant block with an electric wire that cuts through it, Benning said, "like butter."

Sometimes, though, even their own employees can be fooled by the very objects they create and refer to as "props."

McDargh remembers the time he found an employee standing near the company's "futuristic" party set, which needed to be moved.

"He said, 'I need help,' " McDargh recalled.

In reality, he probably could've lifted it with one hand.

"It's painted to look like steel," Benning added.

Ambience, which Benning and McDargh co-founded 15 years ago, doesn't just specialize in optical illusions, like a foam re-creation of Wittenberg University's stone entrance (made for a function there).

If anybody's ever visited one of their "environments," including SantaLand at the Heritage Center of Clark County, they can attest that these guys make some seriously cool eye candy.

"It makes the party," McDargh said.

At a corporate function, "People know they're going to be fed," Benning said. "The visuals are really what define the event."

Working out of an old Hudson car dealership on West Main Street, Benning and McDargh are running a business that thrives without any advertising.

"It's always been word of mouth," Benning said.

For Ambience, word travels fast — and to the strangest

places.

"Somebody wanted a giant Pez dispenser," Benning recalled, "that dispensed brownies."

The offer fell through, but Benning has no doubt they could've done it.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," he said.

A 1989 graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design, Benning created store displays as visual manager of the local Lazarus (now Macy's) until "it turned into a very structured environment."

Not long after, a pharmaceutical company in Columbus hired Benning and McDargh, a former Catholic school teacher and probation officer who did catering on the side, to decorate its annual convention.

Ambience was born.

"This is a generation that grew up on Disney and themed environments," Benning said. "Their expectations are that."

Even still, does anyone truly expect to attend a Moroccan-themed party and see a 9-foot-tall carved foam camel?

For the past four years, Ambience has turned Holiday in the City's SantaLand into a Seussian trip through Springfield, with stylized illustrations of local landmarks backed to foam board.

"The secret," McDargh said, "is to work big."

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.