Artist Dorothy Tanner from Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery was interviewed by 9NEWS (KUSA) Kirk Montgomery on Friday, March 14, 2014
The following was written in the recommendation section of the Lumonics Facebook page in 2011, and we were all deeply touched by this, especially Dorothy:
The artist who creates these pieces is so charming and fun. She was born around the time of the Depression, but her work will do anything but. Her pieces are created using acrylic plastic which is manipulated using heat. The led lights she uses are carefully selected to ensure they play off, and with the sculpture. She loves color and the combinations she selects always ensure the piece still has a fun, sometimes whimsical, and interesting story to tell. If you ever have a chance to see one of Dorothy’s art gallery openings, you will never look at art the same. Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery is the place where an artist can find inspiration and everyone else can become consumed within it. – Mandi S.
Lumonics hosted residents of Kavod Senior Life in Denver yesterday, and what a great group they were! Thanks to art teacher Elizabeth Stanbro for making this happen.
One attendee told me she is legally blind but could see the colors quite vividly and and bought a new cell phone with a very good camera in anticipation of coming. Here are some photos I took. – Barry Raphael
“We took residents from Kavod Senior Life to the gallery, and they absolutely loved it. They were fascinated and SO complimentary. Thank you Lumonics, for the experience! Seeing art that is unfamiliar and taking it in is very helpful for brain health. They were also in community, sharing their impressions which helps counter what some older adults experience with social isolation. Wonderful!” – Elizabeth Stanbro, Kavod Senior Life
Surrounded by the sculptures of Lumonics late founders Dorothy and Mel Tanner, publicist and co-archivist Barry Raphael and Lumonics Studio and Lumonics Immersed creative director Marc Billard stand for a photo in the gallery used for the immersive light and sound show in Denver, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Entering Lumonics Gallery in Denver is like walking onto a spaceship.
Flows of neon line the futuristic gallery. Bright greens, pinks and blues guide the eye. Some of the colors roam free on sculptures, while others are confined by black frames.
When the immersive show begins, it’s as if the spaceship is gearing up for take off. The artwork begins to talk by flashing light. Music plays on speakers and kaleidoscope-like imagery is projected. It’s trippy, for sure.
Founded in 1963 by the late husband-and-wife duo Mel and Dorothy Tanner, Lumonics is the longest running light-art project in the U.S. The studio gallery in Denver is home to the collection of more than 200 of the Tanners’ original works, spanning over 50 years.
“I’ve been looking at them for so many years and I still see new stuff,” said co-archivist and co-curator Barry Raphael.
The multimedia gallery rotates about 75 pieces for display. The illuminated sculptures are characterized by clean neon colors, black acrylic framing and sharp geometric shapes.
Surrounded by the sculptures of Lumonics late founders Dorothy and Mel Tanner, publicist and co-archivist Barry Raphael stands in the larger space used for the immersive show before creative director Marc Billard, not pictured, puts on a shortened immersive show on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, at the Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery in Denver, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
The Tanners started Lumonics at a warehouse in Miami during the 1960s. The concept of illuminated art was realized by the couple in response to an experience Mel had seeing light reflecting off an airplane wing.
“Mel started as a painter, and to get into sculpture was really something,” Raphael said. “Dorothy’s background was working with wood and metal and everything. She didn’t want to do the same thing as Mel.”
The choice to use acrylic glass, which is a significant component in most of their works, started with a commission. From there, it would be the duo’s medium of choice.
“General Electric asked them to create a sculpture to house the pacemaker. They chose the material acrylic glass, also known as plexiglass, which was and still is considered an industrial material — until the Tanners and other artists recognized its value as an art material, with its light transmitting quality, lightness in weight and durability,” Raphael says in a short documentary on Lumonics.
Then, in 1969, the Tanners began experimenting with more immersive experiences, blending light and sound.
Raphael began working with Lumonics in 1972, when he discovered the studio in Miami. Since the passing of the Tanners — Mel in 1993 and Dorothy in 2020 — Raphael has run the studio and works as the administrator of the Lumonics School of Light Art.
“I had been teaching language arts in junior high school, and I had heard about this in Miami, and I visited them,” Raphael said. “I was so taken with the experience, with meeting the artists that I asked if I could volunteer.”
Dorothy, along with the Lumonics collection and studio team, moved to Denver in 2008. Since her passing, Raphael hosts and co-produces Lumonics Immersed, which combines the artwork with sound and projection to create a multi-sensory experience.
No one show is the same, Raphael said. The immersive experience is orchestrated in real-time by creative director Marc Billard, who worked closely with Mel and Dorothy. Like Raphael, Billard also joined the team in 1972 after attending a Lumonics show.
Billard works in a small, hidden corner to produce the shows, surrounded by switches and screens. This control center allows Billard to choreograph the lit sculptures and project videos live, creating a unique audio/visual experience.
“Mel and Dorothy actually had a more primitive system, but 50 years ago, they were doing this,” Raphael said. Using an overhead projector, the Tanners would project images live while putting on the lights show.
As technology progressed, so did the art form. For example, the invention of LED lights in the 1990s changed how Dorothy created her sculptures.
“Mostly her works were externally lighted while Mel was alive, then after Mel died the LEDs started to coming out,” Raphael said. “LEDs really changed things, low heat, low energy.”
Part of the art’s mission is to explore the healing properties of lights and sounds, Raphael said.
“I guess what’s really kept us going is the fact that it’s not just doing art. It’s looking to combine the light art that we do and music to bring people to a better healing place,” Dorothy says in the documentary.
As far as sharing the art form with future generations, the studio hosts field trips and workshops with the Lumonics School of Light Art, co-founded by Dorothy and Billard back in 2018. There, students can work off of an illuminated cube to create their own art pieces.
“This is kind of the building block of the art form. Dorothy and Mel started building cubes in the mid-1960s, and then they electrified it. That’s how it all got underway,” Raphael said.
The Tanner’s artwork was selected as the opening exhibit in The Galleri at Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station. The school will also work with a group of designers from Denver’s Meow Wolf to teach about light-art.
Details
Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery, 800 E. 73rd Ave. Unit 11, Denver, is open by appointment. More information can be found at lumonics.net or by calling 303-568-9406.
Thanks to the Denver Westword Staff for writing about tonight’s event at Lumonics:
Immersive Jazz-Art Series: The Sun Ra Project Friday, December 29, 7 to 9:30 p.m. Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery, 800 East 73rd Avenue, #11
Lumonics, the mind-blowing and therapeutic light art created by the late Dorothy and Mel Tanner, was custom-made to mesh with music, which adds a new sensory layer to the studio’s immersive light shows. This weekend’s Immersive Jazz-Art Experience, The Sun Ra Project, a trio led by Colorado-based jazz star Hugh Ragin on trumpet, with Sean Winters on keyboards and electronics, and Janine Santana on percussion, pairs light art with the Afrofuturistic experimental jazz of Sun Ra. Admission is $20 in advance at Eventbrite, or $25 at the door — a bargain to hear music created by a man who claimed to be from Saturn.
