Rockne Krebs
  • Rockne Krebs
  • Urban-Scale Laser Sculptures
  • Installations
  • Public Art
  • Drawings, Studies and Prints
  • Sculptures
  • Rockne Krebs Books by Carol Harrison
  • Biography - Commissions
    • Solo Exhibitions
    • Group Exhibitions
    • Collections & Permanent Public Art / Panels & Talks
  • Bibliography - Books & Exhibition Catalogues
    • Periodicals
    • Newspapers
    • Exhibition Ads & Invitations
  • Contemporary Art and the Art of Rockne Krebs Blog
  • Contact & Reference Websites
  • Rockne Krebs Gallery Shop

The Laser and Starboard (Home on the Range, Part VI), 1975, commissioned by the St. Petersburg Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts

2/13/2022

0 Comments

 

"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

Picture

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.

"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
Picture
​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.
"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.
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

— Rockne Krebs, Artist (@RockneKrebsArt) January 30, 2022



​- HK

0 Comments

New Books in Science podcast: W. Patrick McCray, Making Art Work

6/27/2021

0 Comments

 

New Books in Science
​

W. Patrick McCray, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (MIT Press, 2020)
 
An interview with W. Patrick McCray
 
Podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/making-art-work


An excerpt from the podcast.

Mathew Jordan:  …was actually very sophisticated and creative, and a lot of the things you profile I encourage the listener to actively Google names and pieces as we bring them up because using digital tools in novel ways and using lasers and new audio techniques, this was really really sophisticated stuff. And it was far more than the stereotype example that maybe some people have in their heads walking through museums of just like, I don’t know someone plugged in a TV backwards and somehow that’s art. Well, it’s very easy to caricature in that way.

W. Patrick McCray:  Well, just think of one example you mentioned, the laser. I mean, today you can go online and buy a laser for $5, have it delivered to your house the next day, and playing with your cat within ten minutes. But the laser was invented in the early 1960s, buying one cost several tens of thousands of dollars; these were large complex really sophisticated sort of things to do. So if you were a sculptor for example, one of the artists I write about in the book is a Washington, DC based artist named Rockne Krebs, who is interested in using laser light to make sculptures. The idea being that the laser beams would delineate the three-dimensional outline of a sculpture. This is something he began to do in the late 1960s working with engineers and technicians to help him realize this vision.

If you would go into an art gallery and see one of his laser light sculptures in say 1969, for most people this probably was the very first time they ever saw a laser. This is before Star Wars, light sabers, all sorts of the popularization of this particular technology, so for some people this was a chance to literally see this new electronic medium that was being presented to them, coupled with the fact that these often times were very ephemeral works of art. I mean if you make a sculpture using laser light, and you turn off the power source, what is left? You’ve got some drawings and memories, and that’s really about it. Which also then posed the challenge for museum directors, gallery owners, and curators. I mean how do you collect, how do you curate, these ephemeral works of art? Which I know is something that curators and museum people who work with new media art today are still grappling with, sort of the ephemerality, if you will, of these objects.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/making-art-work

New Books in Science - W. Patrick McCray, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (MIT Press, 2020)
An interview with W. Patrick McCray @LeapingRobot
Podcast excerpt - https://t.co/8EIfSEGOBW #RockneKrebs #artandscience #greatbook pic.twitter.com/vQoCaDHg3K

— Rockne Krebs, Artist (@RockneKrebsArt) June 26, 2021

Learn more:

Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and
Artists Forged a New Creative Culture 

​by W. Patrick McCray


- HK

0 Comments

Rockne Krebs, 1968. Biltmore Street Studio, Washington, DC

10/12/2020

0 Comments

 

Rockne Krebs, 1968
Biltmore Street Studio, Washington, DC

Plexiglas Sculptures


Ongoing Krebs Plexiglas Sculpture
Twitter Thread
​
​

twitter.com/RockneKrebsArt/status/725678385326899201?s=20

Picture

Picture
Untitled, plexiglas sculpture study, Rockne Krebs, 1966
Picture
Untitled, plexiglas sculpture study, Rockne Krebs, 1966
Picture
Photo: Stephen Northup – The Washington Post
Picture

Richard, Paul. The Washington Post, March 31, 1968. HemisFair Sculpture.


​-HK
0 Comments

1974 Artists Group Photo by Duane Michals

8/23/2020

0 Comments

 
View this post on Instagram

#Repost @matthieuhumery with @get_repost ・・・ #philipglass #stephenshore #nancygraves #rocknekrebs #andywarhol #trishabrown #jocelynkress #richardforeman #lauraforeman #stevereich #vitoacconci □#duanemichals 1974

A post shared by Rockne Krebs (@rocknekrebs) on Mar 23, 2020 at 6:27am PDT

0 Comments

Bell Visuals: Sculpture Minus Object by Rockne Krebs July 18th 1968, Sculpture Minus Object Remix by Robin Bell July 18th 2018 at the Washington Studio School

6/16/2019

0 Comments

 
View this post on Instagram

Sculpture Minus Object by Rockne Krebs July 18th 1968 Sculpture Minus Object Remix by Robin Bell July 18th 2018 @washingtonstudioschool #RockneKrebs

A post shared by Robin Bell (@bellvisuals) on Jul 18, 2018 at 7:01pm PDT

0 Comments

Photo archives: Plasticos Washington D.C. 1968 and A Plastic Presence, 1969 - 1970.

5/25/2019

0 Comments

 

Plasticos Washington D.C. 1968
​

Latin American Art Foundation, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Curated by Ramon Osuna

and

A Plastic Presence, 1969 - 1970

The exhibit was shown at The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, 1969, the Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI, 1970, and the
​San Francisco Museum of Art, CA, 1970.
Curated by Tracy Atkinson and John Lloyd Taylor


These exhibitions explored the use of plastics by artists.

Picture

XXIV, Rockne Krebs, 1967
Plexiglas 100” h x 72” w x 36” d
Photo: Victor Amato

“Actual space is the medium of sculpture. A transparent object occupies space, yet it approached visual non-materiality because it can absent itself from the milieu. Paradoxically, when this occurs, perception of the space
is intensified. The viewer is compelled to consciously locate and define
for himself the space the sculpture occupies, even while the transparency continually confronts him with his environment. The six planes that
​form the interior space through which his body is moving become the armature of the sculpture.
”  
Rockne Krebs, 1967

Ahlander, Leslie Judd.  Art in Washington 1969, 1968.
A Plastic Presence, 1969 - 1970
Artists include Abe Ajay, John Alberty, Peter Alexander, Lee Amino, Richard Artschwager, Jerry Belaine, Robert Bassler, Iain Baxter, Bennett Bean, Bruce Beasley, John Bennett, Ted Bieler, David Black, Tom Clancy, Fred Eversley, Frank Gallo, Cristos Gianakos, Stylianos Gianakos, Eva Hesse, William F. Jones, Craig Kauffman, Peter Kolisnyk, Rockne Krebs, Leroy Lamis, Les Levine, Mon Levinson, Ed McGowin, Louise Nevelson, Pat O'Neill, Terrence O'Shea, Harold Paris, Helen Pashgian, Hal Pauley, Leo Rabkin, Richard Randell, Walter Redinger, Sam Richardson, Roger Shipley, Vera Simons, Sylvia Stone, Racelle Strick, Wayne Taylor, Dewain Valentine, Richard Van Buren, Frank Lincoln Viner, David Weinrib, Susan Lewis Williams, Norman Zammitt, and Edward Zelenak.
Picture

A Plastic Presence, 1970, at the Milwaukee Art Center

Left to right: Pop Flower, Rockne Krebs, 1968, Plexiglas, 8' h; 
​Seated Female Figure, Frank Gallo, 1969; Henry’s Piece,
​Mon Levinson, 1969; Canada Series III, Louise Nevelson, 1968.

Photo: P. Richard Eells


Opening night of Plasticos Washington D.C. 1968, 
Latin American Art Foundation, San Juan, Puerto Rico

​
Artists: Enid Cafritz (Sanford), Geny Dignac, Juan Downey,
Rockne Krebs, and Ed McGowin

Excerpts from the Plasticos Washington D.C. 1968 exhibit catalogue. Introduction by Paul Richard.



-HK
0 Comments

Plexiglas / Lightworks / Laser Works: 1970 film by Edward Kelley on Rockne Krebs

8/18/2018

0 Comments

 

John Anderson uploaded on Jun 27, 2018 to YouTube https://youtu.be/hA7ceYSyVc4

Film by DC artist, Edward Kelley on Rockne Krebs, includes Krebs in his studio working on a Plexiglas® sculpture.

The video shows Krebs' RA and Aleph2 installed in the 1969 Corcoran exhibition, Gilliam, Krebs, McGowin, as well as Krebs discussing his working process and later laser installations, including The Stern Line, 1970, first ever urban-scale laser environment. Also in the feature is Krebs' Cut Flowers, a laser installation piece at the Baltimore Museum of Art, titled for the four students who died at Kent State.

*  Plexiglas® (Studio and Corcoran Art Gallery)
*  Lightworks

*  Laser Works (Light Structures) Studio Experiments, Gallery          Exhibitions and Permanent Installations

The video was filmed on 16mm film in 1969-1970 by artist Edward Kelley, transferred to VHS in the 1980's, and transferred to QuickTime Video 2010. Video preservation is thanks to John Anderson!

The original 16mm film and VHS video is from Alice Denny's archives. Alice Denny was the first director of the Jefferson Place Gallery, involved in the founding of the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and founder of the Washington Project for the Arts.

Video has very poor sound quality.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/hA7ceYSyVc4

Picture
Rockne Krebs in his studio working on a Plexiglas sculpture, 1969.
Picture
1971 ArtForum full page ad. Bottom "A Film by Edward Kelley on Krebs' Photon Structures. 16mm."
0 Comments

Rockne's Experiments, a 1969 film by Edward Kelley. Includes vignettes featuring Rockne Krebs, Sam Gilliam, and Ed McGowin

8/18/2018

0 Comments

 

John Anderson uploaded on Jun 27, 2018 to YouTube https://youtu.be/lPKLjq9d0Qo

1969 film by DC artist, Edward Kelley. Vignettes featuring Rockne Krebs, Sam Gilliam, and Ed McGowin.
​

Sequences
1: Gilliam, Krebs, McGowin, and Nina Felshin, playing a card game.
2: Krebs, Gilliam and McGowin in conversation.
3: Krebs creating a rainbow in the rain.
4: Sunlight and laser beams together to create an ephemeral sculpture
5: Krebs adjusting prisms on a skylight.
6: Prism rainbows projecting onto an unidentified female figure.

This film was possibly created in conjunction with the 1969 Corcoran exhibition, Gilliam, Krebs, McGowin.

Video contains no sound.

The video was filmed in 1969, on 16mm film by artist Edward Kelley, transferred to VHS in the 1980's, transferred to QuickTime Video 2010. 
Video preservation is thanks to John Anderson!

The original 8mm film and VHS video is from Alice Denny's archives. Alice Denny was the first director of the Jefferson Place Gallery, involved in the founding of the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and founder of the Washington Project for the Arts.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/lPKLjq9d0Qo

Additional recent video upload, Sam Gilliam, a film by Edward Kelley, 1969.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/HxvxQAn349c

Picture
Rockne's Experiments, a film by Ed Kelley
0 Comments

Snoop Dogg and The Miami Line /  Instagram video by Snoop Dogg

11/18/2017

0 Comments

 

A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on Nov 13, 2017 at 3:02pm PST

Picture
Public art light sculpture by Rockne Krebs. Video by Rockne Krebs, 1987.

​"Rockne Krebs' iconic Miami Line...lets you know, lest you forget, that you are in The Magic City." Aventura Magazine, 2012.

“…The Miami Line, a magnificent public art work by Rockne Krebs …to create a brilliant, soaring line of colored light pulsing through the city’s heart, casting a magical shimmer of ever-changing color on the river.”
Art Circuits, Miami Line Spans City with Art, 2012.

​© 2017 Estate of Rockne Krebs / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
0 Comments

Archive for one sculpture: Untitled, Rockne Krebs, 1968

2/25/2017

0 Comments

 

Archive for one sculpture: Untitled, Rockne Krebs, 1968.
Aluminum and light reflective tape, 154” H x 154” W x 120” D



Exhibits: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968 Annual Exhibition Contemporary American Sculpture; Jefferson Place Gallery, 1968, Washington, DC; Byron Gallery, 1968, New York, NY, and
​used in fashion photos.


“One is a room-activating composition of aluminum triangles… For the viewer feels as if Krebs has discovered something as monumentally simple as the triangle or the space within a room. It is this simplicity, rather than the shifting richness that swirl about it, that persists in the viewer’s memory…
 
Krebs has written that he likes “the emptiness” of rooms, that he wants “the six planes that form the urban interiors through which our bodies move” to form the armatures for the sculpture that he makes.” Washington Post, Paul Richard, Restraint Enhances Young Washington Artist’s Sculptures, 1968.

0 Comments
<<Previous

    Share your comments and thoughts on Contemporary Art and the Art of Rockne Krebs

    Tweets by @RockneKrebsArt

    via Instagram


    Archives

    February 2022
    June 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    June 2019
    May 2019
    August 2018
    November 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    February 2016
    September 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2012

    Categories

    All
    Art And Technology
    Comments & Thoughts The Art Of Rockne Krebs
    Drawings
    From The Rockne Krebs Archives
    Gene Davis
    Philadelphia Museum Of Art
    Plexiglas Sculptures
    Public Art
    Solar Art
    Strathmore Fine Art
    Studies & Prints
    Urban Scale Laser Sculpture
    Urban-Scale Laser Sculpture
    What’s Up: New Technologies In Art

    RSS Feed


All Images © 2022 Rockne Krebs Art Trust / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York, NY /  Photographs are not to be downloaded or reproduced without license from VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS) / ​
​
Researched and archived by H. Krebs /  Website created by H. Krebs  /  Last update March 20, 2022
Picture