One day in 1976, Bill Pinella, the sales rep for one of the companies we bought our acrylic glass (plexiglass) from, came by with two off- white geometric shapes. They were a different kind of plastic in the polycarbonate family. Bill said the company doesn’t know what to do with them, and thought that Dorothy and Mel Tanner could put them to good use. He used to enjoy coming over to look at the light sculptures, and once told me that he “wished he had Mel’s brain”. The vast majority of his other accounts used the company’s products industrially.

After Mel did some sketches, the result was Lollipop which was over 7′ tall, and lighted internally with incandescent bulbs. Mel created two arms that were lighted with showcase bulbs that were long and narrow. Lollipop was always a favorite of people who came to Lumonics.

After Lollipop’s transportation to Denver in a crate and through 14 years of storage, Lollipop had a crack in it and needed some other restoration . So earlier this year, we repaired it, added LED bulbs, and used a pulley to get it to our mezzanine. It is wonderful to have Lollipop in the performance space. My teammate Marc Billard has it set up on multiple lighting channels, and it is a joy to behold during the Lumonics Immersed performances.

Here are photos by Marc Billard of the original Lollipop and how it looks now:

You can see Lollipop in a one minute video of Lumonics Immersed: