Barry Raphael and Marc Billard became part of the Lumonics artist collective in 1972, when they separately encountered what the Tanners were already deeply into. "It started for me when I walked into the Tanners' gallery in Miami," recalls Raphael, who was the first to join the collective. "I was a language arts teacher in Chicago at the time, and a friend of mine was splitting his time between Chicago and working down at Dade Community College. He told me about it, and I went. It was like the ultimate field trip for me. It was an amazing moment, seeing the theater the Tanners had set up and everything in it. My friend was thinking of trying to move it back up to Chicago, but that never happened. I never set out to move to Miami, but it's just the way it happened. The experience had mesmerized me."
"And I was working construction at the time in South Florida," adds Billard. Mel Tanner's sister was his neighbor at the time, and she'd told him he should go and check it out. It took him about a year to do so, but when he did, Billard says his reaction was remarkable. "Oh, my God," he says. "I was speechless." Mel asked him if he wanted to do some work with him. That was the beginning of Billard (along with his wife, Barbara, who passed away in the summer of 2023) working with the Lumonics collective, building many of the pieces from then on.
"It was Marc's arrival and all his wonderful work that was really the first expansion point back then," Raphael says. "He was able to create larger pieces with more detail, and that's what Mel [Tanner] was working for."
"Mel was working with simple shapes before," says Billard. "When I came in and got my fingers in it, it was able to become very different. Wall pieces and sculptures. New designs. It changed."
Barry Raphael and Marc Billard have helped represent Lumonics for over fifty years
Barry Raphael/Marc Billiard
They brought the Tanners' artistic legacy to Denver in 2008, where it's resided ever since, and Raphael and Billard are working to ensure that the exhibitions survive and thrive for many years to come. They still put on immersive shows every Saturday night at the Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery, 800 East 73rd Avenue; tickets are $25; limited to a small, intimate group only; and include refreshments as well as illumination. Tickets for that event and several others are available through Eventbrite.
But with an eye to the future, Raphael and Billard have started the Lumonics Legacy Project in association with Spotfund. They hope to raise $30,000 in order to preserve more than 200 Tanner light sculptures, as well as the Lumonics archives, which include collages, sketchbooks, hand-painted 35-millimeter slides, original projector tray paintings, preserved media articles, photographs and an expanding library of music visuals. In addition to raising money for creating a sustainable legacy and future, the crowdfunding effort will help establish a Friends of Lumonics nonprofit, which will support partnerships to share Lumonics with the world.
"We're in our seventies now," smiles Raphael, "and are deeply committed to seeing this work remain accessible for future generations. What was once a collective of seven is down to just us two, but we have friends who've volunteered to help us create this Legacy Project."
Specifically, Raphael hopes that the project will allow Lumonics to bring more than 100 pieces out of storage and work on restoring them, with more environmentally sound and long-lasting LED technologies, while still keeping within Mel and Dorothy Tanner's original vision.
Raphael says that the final step of the Legacy Project would be for the whole collection and gallery to move one more time.
"We want to move from our current location to a new building," he says, "in order to create more of an art center and museum, with a performance space. The impact of having a couple of hundred of these light sculptures all gathered together would be quite fantastic."
To support the ongoing Lumonics Legacy Project, see the Spotfund campaign website. Lumonics Immersed happens at 8 p.m. every Saturday, Lumonics Light and Sound Gallery, 800 East 73rd Avenue, #11. To learn more about Lumonics and its history, see the Lumonics website.
