The laser would kick on right at sunset, as a subtle reminder of Florida*s famous flash of green, the natural phenomenon that occurs at the moment the sun “sinks†into the Gulf. -Glenn Anderson
Featured in the St. Pete Catalyst, January 2022
VINTAGE ST. PETE: The Pier and The Laser, Bill DeYoung, St. Pete Catalyst, January 21, 2022
Glenn Anderson, former Director of the St. Petersburg Arts Commission, discusses Rockne Krebs’ public art installation,
​The Laser and Starboard (Home on the Range, Part VI), 1975
in 2022 with Heather Krebs.
* It's easier to read with the .pdf link below.
| 2022_glenn_anderson_transcript_the_laser_1975.pdf |
"And there were mirrors up there, too. So the diffraction grating by that time would have broken up that green beam into yellow, purple, and blue, as well as the green, as individual beams move through to yellow, purple and blue." Glenn Anderson, February 5, 2022
Rockne Krebs, 1975, St. Petersburg, FL. during the the installation of his laser sculpture on The Pier. Photo by Bill Tyjewski. Krebs watches as a 1,000-pound steel laser table is lifted through the window.
"So that scientific table that had the laser and the beam mover and all that stuff on it, actually, he put a lace tablecloth on it first, so you can see the lace tablecloth edges from those pictures that you have. He had hand picked that someplace. It was somebody's family’s tablecloth, probably handed down in generations, ended up in a thrift shop, and he included that. And there were some other objects. I think there is a cup and saucer, and there was a plate, ah, yes, there was. He had actually set a place setting on the table, all of this being tongue in cheek, it was a laser table that he had made into a dining table. The items in that place setting were also things that people had brought down from up north someplace, and it had now passed into a thrift shop. And anyway, yeah, he really had a nicer sense of the community than most people live here, I'll tell you that. "
​Glenn Anderson, February 5, 2022
Rockne Krebs, 1975, by Bill Tyjewski, St. Petersburg, FL. during the the installation of Krebs’s laser sculpture on The Pier. Newspaper -1,000-pound laser table that Glenn Anderson, Director St. Petersburg Arts Commission, mentions in his letter #sciart #lasers #lightart #pioneer pic.twitter.com/KvP29VgcMg
— Rockne Krebs, Artist (@RockneKrebsArt) March 4, 2018
​Press Photo by Weaver Tripp, St. Petersburg Times, 1976.
Artist Rockne Krebs and his laser sculpture are combined in a double-exposure at The St. Petersburg Pier. Krebs is leaning over his Plexiglas art installation piece, Starboard, Home on the Range, Part VI, he built to house the laser.
​Krebs is setting prism timers and working on the laser that will project the intricate beams from off The Pier*s third floor…a malfunction that sent St. Petersburg’s new laser sculpture awry Tuesday night…a handful of thrill-seekers found out about it, started fooling with it… Here’s what happened with the $45,000 art creation by Krebs that, when on target, sends beams of bright lights shooting across the city*s waterfront from The Pier. A device called a beam mover, which moves the beam from The Pier to a reflecting mirror on the south side of the approach to The Pier, got a little rambunctious. It moved the beam a little too far in one direction, allowing part of the beam to miss the mirror and shoot across the seawall near the Senior Citizens Center. - Christopher Cubbison,
​St. Petersburg Times, Sculpture: Laser Beam, April 3, 1976
Artist Rockne Krebs and his laser sculpture are combined in a double-exposure at The St. Petersburg Pier. Krebs is leaning over his Plexiglas art installation piece, Starboard, Home on the Range, Part VI, he built to house the laser.
​Krebs is setting prism timers and working on the laser that will project the intricate beams from off The Pier*s third floor…a malfunction that sent St. Petersburg’s new laser sculpture awry Tuesday night…a handful of thrill-seekers found out about it, started fooling with it… Here’s what happened with the $45,000 art creation by Krebs that, when on target, sends beams of bright lights shooting across the city*s waterfront from The Pier. A device called a beam mover, which moves the beam from The Pier to a reflecting mirror on the south side of the approach to The Pier, got a little rambunctious. It moved the beam a little too far in one direction, allowing part of the beam to miss the mirror and shoot across the seawall near the Senior Citizens Center. - Christopher Cubbison,
​St. Petersburg Times, Sculpture: Laser Beam, April 3, 1976
"One of the things that was also wonderful is that when this piece was working, when the laser was on, that whole Plexiglas box was just kind of glowed. It was eerie and mysterious to have this glowing Plexiglas star down at one end with beams, green beams shooting out in front of it. It was mesmerizing." Glenn Anderson, February 5, 2022
The Laser and Starboard, Home on the Range, Part VI, Rockne Krebs, 1975, St. Petersburg, FL.
— Rockne Krebs, Artist (@RockneKrebsArt) January 30, 2022
Commissioned by the St. Petersburg Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Photograph by Rockne Krebs, he drew on the slide in green ink. pic.twitter.com/gsL4ujoPQP
1977 artist*s work debunks rumor of UFO in St. Pete
From the archives: Internet was once sure St. Pete Pier was site of UFO landing With a 300-drone light show coming for its first birthday, we look back on that time a laser show at the Pier was mistaken for a UFO sighting.
By Paul Guzzo, Tampa Bay Times staff
Archive published July 22, 2021|Updated July 22, 2021
Originally published November 6, 2013
1977 artist’s work debunks rumor of UFO in St. Pete. ​
From the archives: In November 2013, Tampa Bay Times staff writer Paul Guzzo, who at the time worked for the Tampa Tribune, told this amusing tale debunking what was then a popular online rumor that the St. Pete Pier was once home to an alien landing. With a high-tech drone show coming to the skies July 31 for the Pier*s first birthday, we thought this would be fun to remember.
UFO enthusiasts around the world will be disappointed to learn that despite a current popular online rumor, the St. Petersburg Pier was not once home to an alien landing that has since been covered up by the U.S. government.
The online buzz began building this weekend when someone uploaded a firsthand account, written and illustrated by a mysterious author, of a supposed 1977 St. Petersburg close encounter of the third kind.
The materials include typed and handwritten accounts of a UFO landing in St. Petersburg in 1977 with corresponding sketches that depict spacemen, Revelations-styled five-headed beasts, and a drawing of a tornado emanating beams of light over the St. Petersburg Pier.
However, what the author actually witnessed was a then-groundbreaking art installation. And he was not the only one to mistake it for extraterrestrial activity.
In the 1970s, Rockne Krebs was a highly sought-after artist, the first to popularize the use of laser lights as public art. From 1976 through the early 1980s, St. Petersburg was home to one of his unique installations.
Prisms shooting lasers were erected atop the Pier, and mirrors were placed on downtown buildings to reflect the light and create 3-D web-like patterns over the city. Krebs dubbed it “Starboard Home on the Range, Part VI.â€
“It was something special,†said Glenn Anderson, executive director of the St. Petersburg Arts Commission from 1975-82. “He was one of the most avant-garde artists in the country and this was a new concept that no one had seen or heard of before him.â€
Its novelty brought fear along with amazement.
St. Petersburg newspaper reports from the 1970s detailed accounts of the lights misfiring through neighborhoods miles away, startling and confusing residents.
Almost 30 years after it was dismantled, the art installation is back in the news in a War of the Worlds type of way.
It’s being called “The Box of Crazy.â€
The box is a reference to a wooden artist folio case that once belonged to a man named Daniel Christiansen. The case was found on the side of the road in Asheville, N.C., in 2008.
Five years later, photos of its contents — most of them drawn in the early 1980s — were uploaded Sunday to the social media news website Reddit.
Online UFO forums immediately began buzzing.
The photos were uploaded by Asheville resident Dan Wickham. He said a friend who prefers to remain anonymous was the one who found Christiansen;s case.
“It’s too late for me,†Wickham said. “Once I uploaded the photos I became part of the story.â€
Little is known about Christiansen — if he is alive, if he was a resident of St. Petersburg or was visiting, or how his case ended up on the side of the road in Asheville.
Modern-day UFO enthusiasts, equally unaware of the former St. Petersburg art installation, began discussing whether Christiansen’s account gave proof of life on other planets.
Wickham said he did not intend to start an online alien conspiracy. He said he only wanted to share the strange and mysterious contents of the box and had no idea so many people would care about it or its original owner.
“He obviously saw something that changed him,†Wickham said.
What Christiansen witnessed was almost certainly a natural phenomenon occurring at the same time as the futuristic-looking art installation.
In notes found in the folio case, the author often makes reference to the date July 7, 1977. On that day, a tornado whipped through Pasco County.
While that was occurring, he did indeed see lights in the sky above the St. Petersburg Pier.
“You can imagine what a person seeing a laser light show for the first time might think if they had no idea what they saw,†Wickham said. “Then add in a tornado.â€
“I understand why people would have been confused by it back then,†said Krebs’ daughter, Heather. “No one knew what to make of his art. It was all so new.â€
Heather Krebs said more than 40 cities around the world celebrated her father’s laser light installations throughout his career. He was also a featured artist at the 1971 World’s Fair in Japan and honored with countless national awards and grants for his work. He died in October 2011.
As for Christiansen, the man who was scared by Krebs’ St. Petersburg installation, the online forums are busy with people trying to find out more about the man they believe might have documented a UFO.
“I can’t believe this is happening,†Heather Krebs said. “It’s all so bizarre. My father was not into UFOs, but he would have loved this. He enjoyed the unusual and this is definitely unusual.â€
​By Paul Guzzo, Tampa Bay Times staff, 2013
*s are used in place of quotation marks and apostrophes because some punctuation marks are not appearing correcting when published.
RSS Feed
