Neo-Green, Rockne Krebs, 1987, Memorial Art Gallery -
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
Gallery’s aerial art will have city beaming and Laser show to light up Rochester sky, Jack Garner, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, February 19, 1987 (excerpts).
“Art will merge with science over Rochester’s skies for six nights in May.
A one-of-a-kind laser show linking the Memorial Art Gallery with the University of Rochester and the city is being planned to mark the opening of the gallery’s $6.7 million addition.
Lasers will make abstract designs in the air in front of the gallery on University Avenue. In addition, beams of colored light will be directed between the gallery and the UR’s River Campus three miles away/
Another laser will be beamed west from the gallery across downtown Rochester and into space.
The idea “is to provide a dramatic visual symbol emphasizing the connection between the gallery and the community,” said gallery spokeswoman Deborah Rothman.
“We’ll have to issue an advisory for helicopters warning them not to fly too low,” Rothman said. “Otherwise, the laser beams are harmless. They’re too close to the ground for airplanes, and they won’t hurt birds.”
The event, titled Neo-Green: A Laser Light Sculpture, is being created by Rockne Krebs, a pioneering laser artist from Washington, D.C., who promises his greatest laser creation for Rochester….
Three lasers will be placed on buildings at the gallery. Mirrors erected there will be used to make angles and paths of light that will play off the trees and iron gate on the University Avenue side of the museum complex.
A fourth laser will be operated from the tower at the library on the UR campus – and will send a beam back to the gallery...
The gallery’s new pavilion will connect the old gallery complex with the neighboring Cutler Union building. The pavilion will reorient the museum to a University Avenue entrance and will hold a sculpture garden, a restaurant, a museum store and an exhibition gallery. The first exhibition with the new facility will be a show of 18th century French painting.
The idea for the laser sculpture came from gallery director Grant Holcomb.
“I felt we needed to do something that showed a commitment to contemporary art as well as historic art,” Holcomb said yesterday. “I also wanted a larger, highly visible sign of our commitment to entertaining and educating the community. I knew Krebs’ work, so I called him.”
Krebs, 48, holds a degree in fine arts from the University of Kansas and has been active in laser art since 1967. In 1968, he showed his first piece of laser art – Sculpture Minus Object – at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art.
“The laser beam is a modern manifestation of both an antique and basic artist’s tool: line,” Krebs said. “For me, it is both the essence and the spirit of the line. . . A laser is both energy and matter, a line that is continuously generated, traveling statically through space.”
Jack Garner, Gallery’s aerial art will have city beaming and Laser show to light up Rochester sky, 1987
Penny Knowles, Associate Director for Curatorial and Educational Affairs, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, 1987.
Excerpts from her introduction below.
“…I think it might be helpful in your full appreciation of him, if I could tell you a little bit more about him and, what I perceive to be, his place in contemporary art.
Rockne Krebs is both a pioneer of laser art and a master of contemporary environmental sculpture.
He was one of the first artists to recognize the potential of lasers as an art tool, a modern-day counterpart to charcoal, pen or pencil for drawing in space. The first commercial laser was only available in 1960; Rockne experimented with his first indoor pieces in 1967 and since that time –some 20 years—has produced spectacular projects in cities like New Orleans, Philadelphia and his home-base in Washington, DC.
But Krebs is not exclusively interested in lasers as he would be the first to tell you. He has also worked with sun-light and star-light using prisms and ‘camera obscura’; Rockne in fact has much in common with other contemporary artists concerned with enhancing our perceptions of the environment through the manipulation of natural and artificial light: I am thinking of artists like Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Charles Ross and Dale Eldred…
His work, as you have seen it demonstrated in Neo-Green is extremely complex. Like other large-scale environmental artworks such as Christo’s Running Fence, it involves the orchestration of expensive equipment, many workers, paid and volunteer, and the negotiation of special permits…in the case from the FAA, and the City of Rochester.
The Neo-Green Crew
Despite all the preparations for Neo-Green which have extended over many months, the result is not a sure thing; because it is an artwork existing in real time, and over real-time, it is full of risk. The lasers may malfunction, the atmosphere may not be perfect (and it requires a certain amount of particulate matter to be seen). The lasers and mirrors have to be constantly adjusted, and in fact, as soon as Rockne is through with the lecture, that is exactly what he will be doing.
Finally, and this is what makes it particularly contemporary:
the work is ephemeral. It is like a stage performance which after Saturday will exist only in our memory, and in the few preparatory drawings that Rockne has created for it.
For most of us, however, the visual traces of those laser beams, delicate and evanescent in the night, weaving their web of magic over the Gallery, linking it visually and symbolically with the downtown and the University, these will be indelibly imprinted in our mind…and we will probably never experience this space without remembering them.
Monumental Drawing for Neo-Green, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY and Study for Neo-Green, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester by Rockne Krebs, 1986.
🎼🎶🎵🎼 click for the video on Facebook and on Instagram
And now, finally, I want to introduce you to this hard-working magician, who has certainly done his part in making our reopening such a success. Please welcome…”
Penny Knowles, Associate Director for Curatorial and Educational Affairs, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, 1987.
Don't make light of art
Laser Poetry by Ray Czapkowski
Sculpture in the Sky: Rochester will be wrapped in light in ‘Neo-Green’, Jack Garner, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, May 1, 1987 (excerpts).
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Neo-Green, the showcase exhibit for the revamped Memorial Art Gallery, will be displayed for an invitation-only crowd tomorrow night – and on a special, live Channel 21 telecast from 8 to 9 p.m…
The laser exhibit will then be available to the public Sunday through Friday nights, from 9 to 11 p.m…
The miles-long beams of green-blue light that will connect the gallery with the campus and with downtown won’t be as readily visible from a distance, but are designed in a more philosophical sense to link the Memorial Art Gallery and its parent UR campus to the host community – Rochester.
Neo-Green is such a large work that it can’t be totally viewed at one time, from one place.
“I particularly enjoy the idea that I can produce something that occupies such a large space,” Krebs said, “but can also be changed quickly and easily, as I see fit.”
Krebs explained that the patterns of laser light are created through a maze of three lasers generators and about 20 mirrors on buildings at the gallery and on the campus. A new “work” results when the degree of light or the angles of any of the mirrors are changed.
It is the ephemeral, organic quality of laser art that especially appeals to Krebs, who approaches the spontaneity of laser art as a jazz musician embraces improvisation.
“I started out as a sculptor in which I explored ideas about space. And space is meaningless without light.”
At one point, Krebs said, he constructed sculptures of transparent plexiglass. “I walked away from it, turned around, and it seemed to have disappeared. At that moment the idea was triggered to work with lasers. I liked the idea of structuring things in space that aren’t material.”
Krebs, 48, who built his first laser installation in 1968, said, “I’ve always said I wanted to build sculptures that people would walk through.”
And, in effect, Rochesterians are being invited to walk through Neo-Green.
Krebs wants people to feel free to stroll about the gallery grounds, examining Neo-Green from underneath the designs, which will be played off the gallery buildings and the two rows of linden trees in front of the structure.
He said he designs his works to be viewed up close – and not from a distance, as one might view fireworks.
People also can photograph the work. Ron Baird, a photographic specialist at Eastman Kodak Co., suggests that photographers use 400 speed film, and a wide-open F stop (like F2), with a speed of one-half or one-quarter second. “But the camera must be supported on a tripod, or at least be sitting on your rolled-up coat on a rock or a ledge.”
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If other illumination is present – such as streetlights – photographers could try one-fifteenth of a second at F2, Baird added.
(Another suggestion is to “bracket,” or shoot at a variety of F-stops and speeds to improve one’s chances of getting a good exposure.)
Krebs said the lasers won’t hurt anyone; they’ll be out of reach. The only potential danger is if someone were to look directly down a laser beam toward the source – much like the danger of looking at the sun. But the public won’t be in a position to do that.
The laser beam itself is a special form of light that has been amplified by specific molecular action within the projector. The word stands for: “light amplification by stimulated emissions of radiation.”
White light from conventional sources diffuses in all directions, a beam of laser light travels in a tight, narrow path. For example, a half-inch beam will expand only to about three inches while traveling one mile.
“Lasers are only in their infancy,” said Krebs, “I could see myself working in lasers for the rest of my life.”
He added, though, that laser artists have met with their share of naysayers.
“Lasers aren’t firmly established in the arts community,” he admits. “But lasers are really only a tool to be used by the artist.”
“Fortunately, some of the earliest work in lasers by artists was quite strong, and much of it occurred before lasers became prominent in the entertainment field.”
Krebs added that laser art also has had difficulty finding acceptance because it isn’t easily “collectible,” unlike paintings that can be hung on a wall, or marble or metal sculptures that can adorn a patio.
In other words, Neo-Green will be here through Friday – and then it’ll disappear into thin air.”
Jack Garner, Sculpture in the Sky: Rochester will be wrapped in light in ‘Neo-Green’, 1987
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