Reviews

LUMONICS THEATRE AND ART REVIEW EXCERPTS

If it's difficult to categorize the art of Dorothy Tanner, that's the point. Tanner says her major challenge is "to keep under control the tyranny of a logical mind." Judging from her fantastical light and acrylic creations and free-form vidoe/music/poetry projects, it seems the artist bucks that tyranny quite well. Three decades ago, she and husband, Mel, created Lumonics Light and Sound Theatre in Miami, a sensory experience that included light sculptures, fountains, live projection, video art, lasers, electronics, aroma and music. Mel passed away in 1993, but Tanner has continued their work. Collaborating with artist Marc Billard, she produces installations and electronic music videos. Her latest project is creating "Mood-scapes," lighted sculptures designed to induce a soothing meditative state. It is definitely art you have to experience so Tanner invites visitors to an open house the first Saturday of every month, from 8-11 p.m.

Elizabeth Rahe, "Up on Downtown"
City & Shore Magazine, June/July 2008

Dorothy Tanner, Spires

Peace, Love, and Light
By Heather Burdick
New Times Broward Palm-Beach

Lumonics, coined in the sixties from the words "illuminate" and "harmonic," are works of art that explore light and color with a seemingly spiritual element. On Saturday, the Tanner Studio/Lumonics (3019 NW 60 St., Fort Lauderdale) will hold its monthly open house featuring "Moodscapes," an installation of light sculptures designed to soothe and foster creativity. The sculptures and psychedelic video art carry a strong '60s influence, giving the entire project a feeling of retromodernism. Saturday's throwback to the future happens from 8 to 11 p.m. Admission and enlightenment are free.
Visit www.lumonics.net

"Sunshine Spate"
Edge Zones remodels its space with a burst of Florida's best.

"Among the more unusual works at Edge Zones are Dorothy and Mel Tanner's ethereal Lumonics light sculptures. Their booth is illuminated in acid rainbow-hue lights that palpably vibrate off the pallid walls.

Paradigm, a wall piece by the late Mel Tanner dating from 1975, features a constellation of radiant Day-Glo orbs against an onyx background polished to a mirror finish. A Frisbee-size oval glows with fiery red, yellow, and blue streams that melt into each other not unlike the lava flow from a volcano.

Dorothy Tanner's Rocket looks like a futuristic toy Elroy Jetson might have tinkered with. It's brilliant gold and fuchsia exoskeleton coolly abstracts the lines of an arrow in flight."
Carlos Suarez De Jesus, art writer, New Times Miami

"The key to so much of the art of Lumonics [is] light. The studio's founders, Dorothy Tanner and her late husband, Mel, use light and acrylic the way painters use oil and canvas — as a primary medium for artistic expression."
Michael Mills, art writer, New Times Broward Palm Beach

"You've heard of Pop Art, Op Art, and Kinetic Art. Mel and Dorothy Tanner create what could be called 'Wow Art'. In truth, the Tanners do have a better term for their acrylic sculptures: 'Lumonics.' "
Skip Sheffield, Boca Raton Daily News

"Contemporary Art at its most up-to-date..."
Millie Wolff, Palm Beach Daily News

"Mesmerizing art form..."
Rose Boccio, Sun-Sentinel

"Performance art or happening? Light-and-space art or installation? The mixed-media art at Lumonics resolutely resists categorizing. It's all of the above and then some."
Michael Mills, art writer, New Times

"Difficult to describe, beautiful and unusual, the Lumonics Light and Sound Theatre is hard to compare or judge, comprehend even, because it has no peers. It is different, something unto itself, and not entirely of this world."
Ken Plutnicki, staff writer, The Miami Herald

"It's called Lumonics, but what is it? Is it art, is it entertainment, or is it interior design. Yes, it is."
Rita Gillmon, The San Diego Union

"A Lumonics performance is far more than what the name implies. It is not a variation on a theme but a wholly new art form. It is the visual extension of the musical arts. The sounds are received and enjoyed through the eyes instead of the ears...one of the most unusual yet beautiful experiences in the world of art."
David Tedeschi, The Miami Herald

"If inner space is the last frontier, then Mel and Dorothy Tanner are its pioneers. They create an aesthetic experience unlike any other. A walk through the Lumonics Gallery is a bit like a tour of some futuristic spaceship. The plastic sculptures blink, drip, turn and glow. Like the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain, they create a separate reality."
Barbara Marshall, Broward Close-up, Channel 2 (WPBT Public TV)

"You'll become completely enshrouded in a world of sensory delight as the sounds and sights of this astonishing multimedia art form gradually take control of your consciousness."
Jason Budjinski, New Times Broward-Palm Beach

"If you are stumped as to what to do Saturday night, consider spending a visually stimulating, thoroughly entertaining, mind-expanding evening at Lumonics. Art and technology meet to create a veritable shrine to the future's possibility. It is a timely vision we should not fail to see."
Alex Loret de Molac, New Miami Magazine

"The South Florida sun might be broiling outside, the Broward County traffic snarled, but once inside the Lumonics Light and Sound Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, you are indeed in another world. A living work of art, Lumonics is better seen and not described."
Paul Heidelberg, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"As much as I relish the whole performance aspect of Lumonics, I welcome anything that expands the audience for the individual artworks in all their marvelous diversity.The art of Lumonics is first and foremost an experiential art. That's only as it should be."
Michael Mills, art writer, New Times Broward-Palm Beach
excerpted from introduction to Art of Lumonics (Coral Springs Museum)
Mills Introduction

"Think of Dorothy and Mel Tanner as modern-day Timothy Learys. Their sound-and light-filled habitat, a Disneyland for the brain, is the only mind-altering substance they offer. Drop in, tune out, and turn on. The Tanners will take you to anywhere your brain desires."
Tracie Cone, The Herald (1992)

* Tracie Cone, Pulitzer Prize recepient, is now the publisher of The Pinnacle News in the San Jose, CA area.

"Lumonics founders Mel and Dorothy Tanner were both visual artists. Dorothy says a spiritual experience led her husband to envision the creation of a light and sound theater. That was more than 30 years ago. Since then, Lumonics has had many homes and incarnations: Miami, California, Boston. Now it's back in a large Fort Lauderdale space. Although Mel died in 1993, Dorothy—with Marc Billard, who has been a partner of the Tanners for years—keeps the vision going."
Robin Shear, Editor, Eastsider

"The experience defies verbal description, but suffice it to say anyone who enjoys exploring the hidden caverns of consciousness must pay the Tanners' theatre a visit."
Roberta Morgan, New Times Miami

"Lumonics, a trip into the mind's eye, is something that must be seen to be believed. The audience is transported to a totally different space and reality. Some claim their lives have been changed."
John Elliott, Downtowner, Miami-Dade Community College, Downtown Campus

"The space is a warehouse-style office building in Fort Lauderdale, hardly a spiritual setting for an experience that has moved so many. In this space, doctors have sought refuge for terminal patients; alcoholics and drug addicts have drawn strength to battle their vices. Some have seen deceased family members through the avalanche of color and form, others fall into a deep meditative state and still others come simply for celebration."
Dave Warm, staff writer, City Link Magazine

"So what is it like? Words are inadequate; it is, after all, a non-verbal experience. Suffice it to say that emotions and the imagination are exercised in ways rarely experienced in everyday life."
Eric Furry, Sweet Potato, Bangor, Maine

"A Lumonics show is a mesmerizing melding of light, rhythmic movement, and sound. ...a kind of Disneyland for the senses. But in spite of the abstract nature of the presentation and the almost intimidating force of the music and movement, it's a completely opposite effect that gently envelops the viewer...in an exhilarating paradox you feel very relaxed and comforted. Somehow, the futuristic, out-of-space technology and designs don't really frighten us...they merely escort us out of our mundane perceptions and usher us into some exciting fresh ones. It will knock your artistic socks off."
Ed Rice, The Weekly Journal, Bangor, Maine

"Easily South Florida's most unusual venue for multi-media art..."
New Times

"An extremely intense mix of sounds and visuals, a very unique multidisciplinary art... art that seems to be imported from a distant galaxy."
Wet Magazine

Michael Koretzky, editor, Free Press:
"My mind started to wander in a good way...the combination of the light and sound really mellowed me out ... I wanted to take it all home with me."
XS Magazine (now City Link)
Michael's "18-second 'plea'"
(audio file)

"...an unforgettable experience. Lumonics will take you to new areas of aesthetic adventure you never before believed possible."
The Hurricane, University of Miami

"Imagine walking into another 'civilization' where verbal communication is kept limited and visual and audio communications are allowed to roam freely. This idea has come to life at Lumonics."
The Chariot, Taravella High School

"It is difficult to describe Lumonics to friends who haven't been, but I explain it as a multi-sensory cross somewhere between witnessing the creation of the universe and going back to the womb."
Nancy Marino

Best Dance Club, 2002

Best Art Experience, 2001

article by Robin Shear, photos by Callie Zirkle
Eastsider, Jan. 22, 2004
©Forum Publishing Group

article by Michael Mills
©New Times Broward Palm Beach

article by Ken Plutnicki
photo by Patrick Farrell
©The Miami Herald

article by Pat MacEnulty, photos by Ursula E. Seemann
©South Florida Sun-Sentinel

article by Michael Mills; photos by Lannis Waters
©Palm Beach Post

article by Paul Heidelberg, photos by Rich Mahan
©South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"It isn't Oz, but painting wizard Mel Tanner's wife is
named Dorothy. And there's a dizzying rainbow of colors."
article by Marni Silverstone, photos by Ursula E. Seemann
©South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Lumonics Performing Art Gallery in the former Canal Bank Building
Bangor, ME 1982
article by Paul Groswiler; photos by Carroll Hall
©Bangor Daily News

tabletop sculptures | fountains | moodscape meditation room