Lights On At Crystal Bridges

Long before it was considered art, light fascinated everyone who saw it. First it was

fire, says Sara Segerlin, public

programs coordinator for

Crystal Bridges Museum of

American Art, then cityscapes

aglow with manmade light,

then neon signs that turned

the desert into an amusement

park called Las Vegas.

“It changed the way we

live,” she says simply.

Along the way, says

Segerlin, artists began to

wonder how they could

jump on the bandwagon of

illumination.

The evolution of their work

follows the evolution of light

from natural to manmade,

and it’s illustrated in Crystal

Bridges’ current exhibit,

“See the Light: The Luminist

Tradition in American Art.” The works selected for

the exhibit begin with those

created by artists who painted

light as a metaphor for the

spiritual - Martin Johnson

Heade and John Singer

Sargent, for example - and

continue through sculptures

by James Turrell and Jim

Campbell, who work in light

itself.

Segerlin, who will speak

at 1 p.m. Monday on “Light

Bulbs in Art and Society,”

draws parallels between

the neon Packard sign that

“literally stopped traffic” in

Los Angeles in 1923 and Dale

Chihuly’s late 1960s neon

sculpture on show at Crystal

Bridges; between the 1938

patent of fluorescent tube

lighting and Dan Flavin’s

untitled 1964 creation using

pink, daylight, white and

yellow fluorescent bulbs; and

between the introduction

of LED lighting in the

1960s and Jim Campbell’s

“Reconstructed Memory,”which started with the filmmaker’s consideration of blinking light as a form of film.

“So really this talk kind of looks at electric inventions in a bigger way,” Segerlin says, “how the inventions changedsociety and how they kind of gravitated into the artists’ world. It’s interesting to see the intersection between artand science.

“Light artwork is a growing art movement, so it’s very interesting to have ‘See the Light’ here right now,” she adds. “I really want people to think about our fascination with light and why an artist would want to take time to develop this craft.”