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.

 

May 18

From Sketch to Completion

Mel Tanner holding his glasses

photo of Mel Tanner in 1973 (1925-1993)

 

Mel Tanner (1925-1993) had many sketchbooks which we archive. He would often create several sketches until he decided which one to settle on and begin construction. He  would also use colored pencils as seen below.

This was in contrast to Dorothy Tanner who rarely drew. She was a hands-on person who liked to have a lot of material around to “play with.”

Here are some examples of the Mel Tanner drawings and the completed art works:

Sketches and Finished Art Works:

  sketch of free-standing sculpture of Mel Tanner with several bubbles   Free-standing sculpture with bubble on top and two pyramids facing each other

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 sketch of free-standing sculpture with pyramid on top    Free-standing sculpture with pyramid on top

 

 

sketch of free-standing sculpture of Mel Tanner    free-standing sculpture with section of blue in the center

 

 

 sketch of free-standing sculpture    modular light sculpture

 

 

 sketch of wall sculpture of Mel Tanner in three sections   wall sculpture of Mel Tanner in three sections

 

 
Mel Tanner creating shapes on an easel   lighted ceiling and wall that reflect off each other. The wall has a large colorful shape

Mel Tanner, Commercial Installation, Sarasota, FL, 1976

 

Art teacher Max Beckmann making suggestion to studio

Brooklyn Museum Art School Catalog, 1950-1951
Max Beckmann (foreground), Mel Tanner (far right)
photo courtesy of the Special Library Collections
at The Brooklyn Museum
©1950

 

May 17

What’s Lumonics?

 

 

1.   Field Trips and Guided Tours for students of all ages of all ages

   
 
 
– From kindergarteners to seniors in assisted living (we are community partners with the Denver Public Schools Foundation) 
– For the developmentally challenged (we are community partners with Sample Supports)
– For people seeking a substance-free and sober experience (we are community partners with The Phoenix)
– For companies and organizations
 

2. Award-winning Lumonics Immersed on Fridays and Saturdays that originated in 1969 and continues to evolve, intended to energize and inspire attendees. 
 
 
 
 
3. Rental of Lumonics for private and public events
 
 
4. Lumonics Mind Spas that foster a state of relaxation and creativity:
For temporary or permanent private or public spaces. We welcome museum administrators, city planners, art consultants, architects, designers, and individuals to inquire. 
 
 
 
5. Art Classes at the Lumonics School of Light Art (students have ranged in age from 8 to 85, so far). We recommend the 6-hour class on a Sunday in which you take home your “artified” lighted cube. 
 
 
 


6.  Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery
The Gallery displays 75 light sculpture from a rotating collection of over 200 artworks by the late Dorothy and Mel Tanner.  11 light sculptures from the collection have been selected as limited editions, and all are on display at the Gallery. Your purchase helps support the Lumonics Legacy Project. 

 

 

May 15

Engaging with art and culture may help slow biological aging.

Engaging In This Beloved Activity May Actually Slow Biological Aging, Study Suggests

The highly enjoyable activity showed benefits similar to those of physical exercise, according to the study’s authors.

By  Kimberley Richards, Huff Post

Art lovers rejoice: A new study suggests that engaging with art and culture may help slow biological aging.

The study published in the Innovation of Aging journal on Monday evaluated over 3,500 adults in the UK Household Longitudinal Study to analyze their level of engagement with art and culture between 2010 to 2012. Researchers found that arts and cultural engagement had a comparable association with slowing certain biological aging clocks to that of physical activity.

Unlike chronological age, which simply refers to how long you’ve been alive, biological age refers to how fast your cells, tissues, and organs are aging, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level,” Daisy Fancourt, a lead author of the study and professor of psychobiology & epidemiology at University College London told The Guardian. “They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise.”

The researchers measured the volunteers’ engagement in arts and culture by using a survey to determine if they had participated in any of the four following activities in 12 months: participatory arts (singing, dancing, painting, crafting, photographing), receptive arts (attending art exhibitions), visiting heritage sites (historic parks, historic buildings, monuments) or engaging in other cultural activities (museums, libraries or archives).

Engagement in arts and culture was also evaluated by the frequency and diversity of activities. The study noted that the diversity of activities was just as important as the frequency of engagement. Participants were also asked to record their engagement in sports-related activities, such as swimming, running, cycling, fishing or yoga and pilates.

The researchers used blood samples from the participants to analyze their biological age.

“We found in this study that ‘arts engagement’ was related to 4% slower aging rates, meaning people were about a year younger, biologically, if they were regularly engaged in the arts,” Fancourt told NPR. “This is actually the same reduction in biological aging that we saw for physical activity.”

South_agency via Getty Images

“These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level,” Daisy Fancourt, a lead author of the study and professor of psychobiology & epidemiology at the University College London told The Guardian.

The average age of the participants was 52.1. The findings were stronger for the adults aged 40 and above, the study states.

The authors pointed out several of the study’s limitations. For starters, the participants were asked to self-report their engagement in arts and culture, which could introduce bias.

Additionally, Eamonn Mallon, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Leicester, who was not involved with the study, told CNN that it’s important to note that while the study entails “carefully conducted” research, it’s “possible that people who are biologically younger for their chronological age are simply more likely to get out and do things.”

Feifei Bu, a co-author of the study and research fellow at University College London, told The Guardian that the study builds on “a growing body of evidence about the health impact of the arts.”

Arts activities have been “shown to reduce stress, lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular disease risk, just as exercise is known to do,” she said.

Researchers have emphasized that engaging in hobbies and mentally stimulating activities in adulthood could have many positive health benefits — including benefits to your cognitive health.

A study published in 2025 found that older adults who regularly listened to or played music had a lower risk of developing dementia.

As Dr. Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist at Yale Medicine in Connecticut, previously emphasized to HuffPost: “Being cognitively active throughout one’s life can have a protective role” in brain health.

May 06

Denver Fringe Festival 2026

 

 

Lumonics Immersed
Denver Fringe Festival
Thursday, June 4- Sunday, June 7

Lumonics is a multisensory immersive experience presented by one of the first and longest-running light art projects in the US. The late Light and Space artists Dorothy and Mel Tanner originated this highly-acclaimed transformative art experience in 1969, and it continues to evolve. Engage with 75 light sculptures in rotation from a collection of over 200 works. The elements of the experience are the light sculptures, music, special effects, and projection. Each performance is new and orchestrated live.

“Best Long-Running Immersive Experience”
– Denver Westword

 

Thursday, June 4:   8 pm to 10 pm

Friday, June 5:   8 pm to 10 pm

Saturday, June 6:   1 pm to 3 pm

Saturday, June 6:   8 pm to 10 pm

Sunday, June 7:   1 to 3 pm

Sunday, June 7:   8 to 10 pm

 

 

 

 

Lumonics is honored to be accepted to participate in the 2026 Denver Fringe Festival that takes place June 4 thru June 7, 2026. 

We will be presenting performances of Lumonics Immersed  during those 4 days at the Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery. Each performance is orginal and not repeated.

The annual Fringe festival

Denver’s thriving arts scene is overflowing with talent and innovation. Our goal is to provide more outlets every year so artists to have a way to test their work, try new things, push the boundaries. And we want to channel that work into performance venues at accessible prices so that live performance is available to as many people as possible. We do this every June at our annual Fringe festival that features dozens of fresh, original shows at venues throughout the RiNo Art District, the greater Five Points area and beyond.

At the Denver Fringe Festival, we believe that the power of performance art can’t be overstated, that it’s a key component to inspiring thought-provoking conversations and building thriving communities. That’s why the Fringe also features free pop-up performances so everyone can experience live performing arts!

What does the future of the Denver Fringe look like? Picture a weeks-long festival with live performance taking place at dozens of creative spaces, with theater, comedy shows, dance, cabaret, and circus happening at any hour of the day or night —an annual performing arts festival so inclusive and expansive that we can’t imagine summer in Denver without it!
* excerpted from www.denverfringe.org/

* poster by Joe Palec