On June 19, 2023, Lumonics hosted this year’s interns attending the Museum of Outdoor Arts’ Design and Build Program. The Design and Build Program began in 1991, and is an opportunity for emerging artists, students and creative minds to express their creativity in collaborative art, architecture and design projects. The program generates temporary public art, exhibitions, installations and design concepts and offers lessons in collaborative teamwork, problem-solving and aesthetic and technical considerations. Since the inception of the program thousands of students throughout Colorado have collaborated on innumerable projects. Sites included Denver Union Station, Denver International Airport’s Peña Blvd., Cities of Englewood, Greenwood Village, Denver, Castle Rock, and Colorado Springs. * Tim Vacca is the Director of Programs & Communications.
We gave a tour including the gallery rooms, art studio, Lumonics School of Light Art, and the performance space, discussed the history of our project, and concluded with Lumonics Immersed.
A recent article in the Washington Post discussed the Maker Movement which focused on workshops, mostly in San Francisco, that teach people how to work with their hands, and how they realize how gratifying it is.
Many attending are technology workers who sit in front of computer screens all day. Some companies set up classes to team-build.
Comments by Participants at Workshops
“It’s tremendously grounding, and it’s meditative…”
“had this deep sense of accomplishment, and it was so incredibly satisfying…”
“I like learning how to be competent at something. At the end of it — look, I have this thing,”
“You’re tapping into a history of human craftsmanship that’s been around for the entire existence of our species.”
“As people spend less time commuting, they have more time for hobbies, and more of a need for connection.”
Lumonics School of Light Art, part of the Maker Movement
This kind of gratification is what Dorothy Tanner had in mind when she founded the Lumonics School of Light Art in 2018, shortly after she received the Denver Mayor’s award for Innovation in the Arts, and two years before she passed. A student makes a cube, electrifies it with an LED bulb, and then “artifies” it.
The cube has significance in the history of the Lumonics artform because it is one of the first lighted shapes created by the Tanners in the 1960s. You can read student comments and see many cubes that have been completed.
Read our blog which links to the Post article.
Cube in the graphic was created by by Tim Vacca, one of the first attendees
of the Lumonics School of Light Art when it opened in 2018
Students constructing cubes at the Lumonics School of Light Art
* excerpted from the Design and Build webpage on the MOA website
