(Cat by Dorothy Tanner. Cube by me and Sean.)
Bridge Brave posted the following on Facebook. She and her husband Sean contributed to our Lumonics Legacy Project.
www.lumonics.net/legacy
The summer of 2022 was a weird one for me. I’d just moved back across the country (again). I’d just sold my first short story. And my dad had just died. The same week he passed, I traveled to Denver for my first-ever StokerCon.
I worried this was a mistake. I had never met any of these people in person. I was worried I’d be too full of grief to participate in a meaningful manner. Sean suggested we get there early and have some downtime before all the festivities began. So we checked into a little haunted b&b and spent a few days wandering around, eating too much food and checking out the sights.
I came across an ad for Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery, which was offering an immersive show that evening. I bought tickets and we set off. We arrived before anyone else and I met Barry Raphael in the lobby. He walked us around, explaned the history of the project, told us about the legacy of Dorothy Tanner, introduced us to Marc and Barbara, and then settled us in for the show.
I remember he told us that we could stay seated for as long as we needed after. We giggled to each other about that, thinking “what on earth could possibly be about to happen?”
What followed was the equivalent of six months of intensive therapy. I struggle to describe it, but it will stay with me always.
When Barry came to check on me at the end of the show, I realized everyone else had already left. We drove back to the b&b in silence until I finally said, “I want to go again.”
StokerCon ended up being the exact kind of community and kinship I needed, and I was able to enjoy it thoroughly thanks to the warmth and love we’d happened upon in that out-of-the-way art space.
We went back to Lumonics, and even attended a workshop to build our own light cube. Barry stayed in touch, after we traveled home. We grieved Barbara’s death with them a year later, having our own little memorial for her, to help guide her into rejoining the universal fabric.
This year, I learned the gallery was having some funding issues and quickly pulled together what I could to help a special place that has helped me when I needed it the most.
And as a surprising thank you, Barry and Marc sent us one of Dorothy’s sculptures. Now a piece of Lumonics gets to live on with me. Forever.
(Cat by Dorothy Tanner. Cube by me and Sean.)
