May 03

Lumonics Legacy Project Aims to Keep Immersive Pioneers’ Vision Alive by Teague Bohlen, Westword

 

Lumonics Gallery and Performance Space on 73rd and Washington…for now.  Photo by Marc Billard

Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery has been around for decades, ever since artists Mel and Dorothy Tanner started working with light sculptures and sound to create immersive experiences back in 1969. Dubbed “Lumonics,” the unique art form was conceived to engage multiple senses — primarily sight and sound — simultaneously, providing audiences a deeper connection to the work and the world around it.

Barry Raphael and Marc Billard became part of the Lumonics artist collective in 1972, when they separately encountered what the Tanners were already deeply into. “It started for me when I walked into the Tanners’ gallery in Miami,” recalls Raphael, who was the first to join the collective. “I was a language arts teacher in Chicago at the time, and a friend of mine was splitting his time between Chicago and working down at Dade Community College. He told me about it, and I went. It was like the ultimate field trip for me. It was an amazing moment, seeing the theater the Tanners had set up and everything in it. My friend was thinking of trying to move it back up to Chicago, but that never happened. I never set out to move to Miami, but it’s just the way it happened. The experience had mesmerized me.”

“And I was working construction at the time in South Florida,” adds Billard. Mel Tanner’s sister was his neighbor at the time, and she’d told him he should go and check it out. It took him about a year to do so, but when he did, Billard says his reaction was remarkable. “Oh, my God,” he says. “I was speechless.” Mel asked him if he wanted to do some work with him. That was the beginning of Billard (along with his wife, Barbara, who passed away in the summer of 2023) working with the Lumonics collective, building many of the pieces from then on.

“It was Marc’s arrival and all his wonderful work that was really the first expansion point back then,” Raphael says. “He was able to create larger pieces with more detail, and that’s what Mel [Tanner] was working for.”

Mel was working with simple shapes before,” says Billard. “When I came in and got my fingers in it, it was able to become very different. Wall pieces and sculptures. New designs. It changed.”

 

Barry Raphael and Marc Billard have helped represent Lumonics for over fifty years

They brought the Tanners’ artistic legacy to Denver in 2008, where it’s resided ever since, and Raphael and Billard are working to ensure that the exhibitions survive and thrive for many years to come. They still put on immersive shows every Saturday night at the Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery, 800 East 73rd Avenue; tickets are still only $25, are limited to a small, intimate group only, and include refreshments as well as illumination. Tickets for that event and several others are available through Eventbrite.

But in terms of the future of the project, Raphael and Billard have started the Lumonics Legacy Project. They hope to raise $30,000 in order to preserve more than 200 Tanner light sculptures, as well as the Lumonics archives, which include collages, sketchbooks, hand-painted 35-millimeter slides, original projector tray paintings, preserved media articles, photographs and an expanding library of music visuals. In addition to raising money for creating a sustainable legacy and future, the crowdfunding effort plans to establish a Friends of Lumonics nonprofit, which will support partnerships to share Lumonics with the world.

“We’re in our seventies now,” smiles Raphael, “and are deeply committed to seeing this work remain accessible for future generations. What was once a collective of seven is down to just us two, but we have friends who’ve volunteered to help us create this Legacy Project.”

Specifically, Raphael hopes that the project will allow Lumonics to bring more than 100 pieces out of storage and work on restoring them, with more environmentally sound and long-lasting LED technologies, while still keeping within Mel and Dorothy Tanner’s original vision.

Raphael says that the final step of the Legacy Project would be for the whole collection and gallery to move one more time.

 

Sep 09

Lumonics: Origin to Today

LUMONICS

Light & Sound Gallery — Denver, Colorado

Origin

Lumonics began in 1969, when artists Mel Tanner (1925–1993) and Dorothy Tanner (1923–2020) opened the Lumonics Light and Sound Theatre in Miami and began fusing light sculpture, music, and live multi-sensory performance into a single art form. Dorothy and Mel  each brought formal training to the collaboration — she studied sculpture under instructors including Chaim Gross and Milton Hebald, and drawing under Gabor Peterdi, at institutions including the Educational Alliance and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Mel Tanner, after serving in combat in World War II, enrolled at Pratt Institute and the Brooklyn Museum Art School under the new G.I. Bill. His instructors included the famous Max Beckmann and John Ferren, who had assisted Pablo Picasso in Paris in the 1930s. The Tanners met at the Brooklyn Museum in 1949. That educational grounding later shaped the couple’s collaborative approach: rather than treating light as a stage effect, they sculpted it into geometric forms and lighted them from within — expanding what both “lighting” and “sculpture” could mean. The collective later relocated to Denver, where it is now recognized as one of the first and longest continuously running light-art studios in the United States, predating today’s immersive-art movement by decades.

The Tanners began their light art at the same time as the later to be named Light and Space art movement got underway in southern California. Some of the artists included Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, and James Turrell. Light and Space had affiliation with art schools and industry, whereas the Tanners were very isolated from the art world in Miami at that time, and were not aware of the movement they were part of.

In 1972, Barry Raphael and Marc Billard, separately walked into the Tanners’ Miami gallery and were captivated; Raphael  was the first to join, followed shortly by Billard, who apprenticed under longtime studio assistant Pete Adams. That meeting launched a collaboration that has now spanned more than five decades. The group grew into a working art collective of Mel and Dorothy Tanner, Marc Billard, Barbara Billard, Barry Raphael, and additional members over the years, producing hundreds of light sculptures and an evolving body of video and electronic music under the Lumonics name.

The work has also earned formal art-historical recognition: in 2005, art historian Michael Betancourt devoted a full book to it, The Lumonics Theater: The Art of Mel & Dorothy Tanner, describing the collective’s fusion of sculpture, light, video, and sound as a Gesamtkunstwerk — a unified “total artwork.” That framing has anchored critical understanding of Lumonics ever since.

The Art Form & Mission

Lumonics is built on a simple but ambitious idea: that light, music, projection, and space, experienced together, can shift how a person feels and thinks. Dorothy and Mel Tanner’s sculptures — geometric and free-form,  luminous, hand-built — are staged with layered video projection and original electronica/world-music composition (a practice Dorothy began with Marc Billard in 1993) to create an environment meant to relax the body while awakening the mind. Many sculptures have since been converted to LED and run on a DMX lighting control system, letting today’s stewards choreograph light, video, and music together in real time while preserving the original hand-built forms. The collective’s long-running public program, Lumonics Immersed, carries that mission forward every week, and the group has extended it through Lumonics Mind Spas (relaxation- and creativity-focused installations for public and private spaces) and the Lumonics School of Light Art, which has taught hands-on light-sculpture classes to students from age 8 to 85.

The mission has also included community access: Lumonics partners with the Denver Public Schools Foundation on student field trips and art classes, Sample Supports to host monthly sessions for developmentally-challenged adults, and with The Phoenix to offer a substance-free, sober community experience. The work’s therapeutic quality has also drawn institutional use beyond the gallery: Tanner/Billard video productions have been used in the psychology department at Nova Southeastern University and in the bio-feedback program at a national addiction-treatment center.

The Collection

The Lumonics collection comprises more than 200 original light sculptures by Mel and Dorothy Tanner, along with an extensive archive of collages, sketchbooks, hand-painted 35mm slides, original projector-tray paintings, press coverage, photographs, and music/video work. Roughly 75 sculptures rotate on display in the Lumonics gallery in Denver at any given time. Eleven pieces have been selected as limited editions, offered in support of the collection’s Lumonics Legacy Project.

Recognition & Continued Impact

  • Denverite has described Lumonics as one of the very first and longest-standing light-art studios in the country, established long before immersive art became a cultural trend; Westword has covered the collective’s history and retrospectives repeatedly over the years, and awarded it the Best Long-Running Immersive Experience.
  • In 2017, the Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA) mounted a full retrospective, Lumonics Then & Now, with Westword‘s Michael Paglia describing the internally lit sculptures and projected video as transforming the museum’s galleries into an immersive, softly glowing world of their own.
  • Lumonics mounted the opening exhibit in The Galleri at Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station, a permanent showcase dedicated to Colorado artists; Mel Tanner’s Postscript remains part of Meow Wolf’s permanent collection.
  • The collective’s work has also been presented at Denver International Airport, Denver Union Station, and other Denver-area institutions including the Lakewood Cultural Center and VERTIGO Art Space.
  • Dorothy Tanner received the Denver Mayor’s Award for Innovation in the Arts at age 95, two years before her passing.
  • Marc Billard’s video and projection work has continued the collective’s practice into new venues and formats, including Night Lights Denver (projected on the historic Daniels & Fisher Tower), ULTRA Music Festival ,the Supernova Digital Animation Festival, and the Digerati Experimental Media Festival (Marc’s short film, Mountain Meditation 2 will be played on the new LED screen at the 16th Street Mall from September 1st to Nov 30th, 2026, and  was also selected for the 2026 DocuWest Documentary Film Festival.
  • The group’s work and history have also been documented in the book Lumonics: The Light Art of Dorothy & Mel Tanner, and on television including PBS.

Today: The Lumonics Legacy Project

The passing of Dorothy Tanner in 2020 and of Barbara Billard in 2023 reduced Lumonics from seven to two: Marc Billard and Barry Raphael, both of whom have been part of the collective since 1972 and now lead the Lumonics Legacy Project together — Raphael as co-archivist and administrator of the School of Light Art, Billard driving the collective’s creative and video production work. Rather than let the collection disperse, they are working to stabilize, preserve, and continue sharing the 200-plus sculptures and the archive that document over 55 years of light-art history. The goal is to keep the work intact and accessible: completing the LED conversion of the remaining sculptures, securing a permanent home with performance space, and ultimately building a traveling exhibition so Lumonics can be shared with audiences well beyond Denver.

Lumonics is not a recent entrant to the light-and-immersive-art conversation but one of its originators — a living, working collective, grounded in formal artistic training and now the subject of scholarly study (it is included in the curriculum at The Sorbonne), whose founders were building sculptural light environments before the term “immersive art” existed, and whose current stewards are actively creating new work, teaching, and exhibiting today as they chart the course of Lumonics into the future.

 

Sep 07

ILLUMINATE: THE ALCHEMY OF IMAGINATION

ILLUMINATE: THE ALCHEMY OF IMAGINATION

Sunday, October 18 from 1 pm to 4 pm

 

What happens when we step outside ordinary perception, enter the landscape of our imagination, encounter something new within ourselves, and give it form?
 
Illuminate is a deeply immersive creative experience exploring the relationship between perception, imagination, creativity, and the self.
 
We begin by stepping outside ordinary perception through the pioneering light and sound environment of Lumonics. Through light, sound, and color, participants are invited into a state of awe, receptivity, and wonder. It is an exhilarating way to come to your senses!
 
From there, Helena guides participants inward through archetypal visualization, opening a landscape of symbolic imagination and self-discovery.
 
Matt then invites participants to bring what they’ve encountered into physical form through Drawing Games—creating a visual mirror of their inner experience and exploring what happens when imagination becomes expression.
 
Finally, Lisa uses Neurosculpting to help participants integrate and embody what they’ve discovered, transforming an extraordinary experience into something they can carry into everyday life.
 
SEE → IMAGINE → CREATE → BECOME
 
This is not simply an evening of art, meditation, or personal development. It is a deliberately designed journey into the inner landscape—an invitation to perceive differently, imagine more freely, recognize new possibilities within yourself, and bring something of that discovery back into the world.
 
And there’s our central proposition:
SEE something extraordinary.
IMAGINE something within yourself.
CREATE something from it.

BECOME more of who you are capable of being.

 

$125 ticket link for the whole event

$175 ticket link for the whole event + signed print by Matt

 

Aug 30

Buy or Gift Advance Tickets to Lumonics Immersed

 
 

 
General Admission $25 (No expiration date)

Student Tickets $15  (No expiration date)
 
 

 

Aug 27

Yayoi Kusama (March 22, 1929 – August 14, 2026)

“I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.”

“I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live. “

“A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing.”

“Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Take off your clothes. Forget yourself. Make love.”

Image result for yayoi-kusama images

Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, into a conservative family who did not support her artistic ambition. Her childhood was shaped by a repressive home life and hallucinations accompanied her throughout her life. Featuring fragmented flashing lights, fields of dots and endless nets, these recurring visions would later form the foundation of her practice. As a fine art student in Kyoto, she initially learned painting in the Japanese modernist Nihonga style but soon found the genre too restrictive. In 1958 she boldly emigrated to New York, defying family and societal expectations in pursuit of an artistic career.

Arriving in Manhattan during the height of postwar abstraction, Kusama was faced with the brutal realities of a male-dominated, Western-centric art world. Nonetheless, she quickly established herself in the New York art scene with her monumental paintings, soft sculptures and environmental installations. Her famous ‘Infinity Nets’ series (1960s–2026), depicting small, repetitive marks across vast canvases, solidified the artist’s position as a leading figure in the avant-garde community. Often taking up to fifty hours to complete, these hypnotic paintings showcased Kusama’s obsessive commitment to what she refers to as ‘self-obliteration’, a meditative fusion of the self with its surrounding environment.

Throughout the 1960s, Kusama expanded her practice to encompass performance art and public happenings, interrogating the social and moral ideologies of her time. Her subversive body painting protests and love-ins, staged in front of landmarks such as the New York Stock Exchange, Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge, used nudity and polka dots to challenge a wide range of topics, from the ongoing Vietnam war to America’s sexual prudishness and the art world’s conservatism. In one of her most famous provocations, Narcissus Garden (1966), she scattered hundreds of reflective silver spheres on the lawn at the Venice Biennale as an uninvited artist, selling them to visitors as a commentary on the commodification of the contemporary art market. Kusama’s radical approach broke down the boundaries between art and audience, individual and collective, championing an immersive call for civil activism.
courtesy of Frieze Magazine
the whole article

 

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama. Photo: Jose-Fuste RAGA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

 

 

yayoiI'M HERE, BUT NOTHING, Yayoi

I’m Here, But Nothing

 

 
 

Infinity Mirrored Room-The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away
Yayoi Kusama, 2013

wood, metal, glass mirrors, plastic, acrylic panel, rubber, LED lighting system, acrylic balls, and water
113 1/4 x 163 1/2 x 163 1/2 in. (287.66 x 415.29 x 415.29 cm)
photo copyright Yayoi Kusama
 

 

“Infinity Mirrors”

 

Sculptures and paintings from My Eternal Soul (begun in 2009)
Tyrone Turner for The New York Times

 

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins  (2016)
Tyrone Turner for The New York Times

 

yayoi_alex majoli_magnumpictures

Photo by Alex Majoli (Magnum Pictures)

 

yayoi_save

The Yayoi Kusama Museum Opened Oct.2, 2017 in Tokyo.

—

Dorothy Tanner had told me that she and Mel visited Yayoi Kusama’s studio in New York in the mid-1960s when Kusama was creating art with macaroni as her medium. It is fascinating that soon they would all be using light as a medium.
– Barry Raphael

—

 “Since 1977, Ms. Kusama has lived by choice in a mental hospital in Tokyo due to nervous disorders and hallucinations stemming from childhood. She continues to paint and create to this day in her artist studio across the street from the psychiatric hospital.”
The Observer

Yayoi Kusama Created Fantastical ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’ That Became the Art World’s Most Famous Backdrops. Her Work Spanned Counterculture to the Cosmos  (Smithsonian)

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The Art Newspaper Obit