Lannan Museum, Palm Beach, FL 1994

Walking into a living painting

Entering “Light-Wall,” an installation at the Lannan Museum, is like walking into a painting. Painter Maiya Keck painted Day-Glo flowers on the wall. On these flowers, I stapled fiber optics that would glow and change color rapidly. The brilliant reflective color at the entrance of this long narrow room fades into pure white light in the adjacent second room.

Walking into what appears to be a flat surface transforms your sense of space. Light pulsates in a frenetic way through wild veins in the ceiling and then is carried down through meandering glass tubes. In a recessed area, fine flickering points of light transport you further into deep space, where you feel that you are floating, and you lose your earthbound orientation and sense of time.