On this day in 1976, the Rockne Krebs Laser Sculpture installation at the St. Petersburg Municipal Pier was unveiled.
It consisted to two pieces. The laser beam configuration itself was titled, "Starboard" while the equipment installation inside the Pier was called, "Home on the Range, Part VI."
I was the Executive Director of the St. Petersburg Arts Commission and the Project Director for Rockne's work here. It was a really incredible and wondrous work of art so far ahead of its time that technology was not able to keep up with it.
Like laser light itself, it had a short but brilliant life.
- Glenn Anderson
The Laser and Starboard, Home on the Range, Part VI, St. Petersburg, FL.
St. Petersburg, FL. laser sculpture back in the news.
The Tampa Tribune, November 6, 2013,
1977 artist’s work debunks rumor of UFO in St. Pete, by Paul Guzzo
Documentation of a 1977 installation by laser artist Rockne Krebs was recently mistaken for documentation of a UFO landing.
A Florida newspaper debunks the myth.
Excerpt from Glenn Anderson’s remembrance in Rockne Krebs Photographs + Interpretations by Carol Harrison
A brief anecdote on my friendship with Rockne Krebs
“….I won’t go into details on the wonder of that artwork. When it was working, it was “other worldly” and the 8th wonder of the world. But
when it was broken down, it was a curse…The failure was not Rockne’s fault. He had done the best he could, and brilliantly, but he was always so far ahead of the curve as an artist, science had not kept up with reliable technology. In that day, large lasers were very temperamental and unreliable but if that was the medium an artist wanted to explore, he had few options.
….I was daily working with him in some way and we were connected at the hip in so far as our futures in St. Petersburg were concerned…. My close daily contact with Rockne gave me insight into both him as a human being and as an artist. As a functioning human being I experienced his incredible drive and work ethic. He was driven to see that next thing that “had never been seen before”…the ultimate goal of a highly functioning artist. As an artist, he was dedicated to the truth and purity of both concept as well as visual experience. The artist Rockne had to share the scientist Rockne….” 1*
- Glenn Anderson
1* Harrison, Carol. Rockne Krebs Photographs + Interpretations. 2013.
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