Art & Archives
Audiovisual Collection
Neon Colors / East Face of Miami River Bridge, 1983 / Color Scheme for The Miami Line Collection: Miami-Dade Art in Public Places
Neon Colors / East Face of Miami River Bridge, 1983 / Color Scheme for The Miami Line Collection: Miami-Dade Art in Public Places
Rockne Krebs: Trees
Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/33euk4wn
Rockne Krebs: Blue
Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/yft756v2
Every Sculpture Tells a Story ~ Whitney Annual Exhibition, 1966
Untitled, Rockne Krebs, 1966. Plexiglas, aluminum and Formica
Photo: Art in America, January-February 1969. Collector: Larry Aldrich by John Russell.
First exhibited in the 1966 Whitney Annual Exhibition, then purchased by Larry Aldrich and exhibited at The Aldrich.
“One is a room-activating composition of aluminum triangles… For the viewer feels as if Krebs has discovered something as monumentally simple as the triangle or the space within a room. It is this simplicity, rather than the shifting richness that swirl about it, that persists in the viewer’s memory…” Paul Richard, Washington Post, Restraint Enhances Young Washington Artist’s Sculptures, 1968
Plexiglas Sculptures
Rockne Krebs, 1968
Adams Morgan studio, Washington, DC
A different time, the same place
Nov 15, 1969, Anti-Vietnam War Protest on the National Mall, Washington, DC, photos by Rockne Krebs / Lynda Benglis and Rockne Krebs, 1971/Rocky’s happy glasses, 1970
Washington Star, 1972 “The man who turned laser beams into an artistic accomplishment will have a grim exhibit in the Art for McGovern. He plans to have it flash once every second for as many seconds as there have been lives lost in the Vietnam war, he will have to keep the beam flashing all night…”
The Rainbow Trees / A Virtual Exhibit
A Rainbow Tree, 1970
A Red Rainbow Tree, 1973
A White Rainbow Tree, 1973
Hand-colored lithographs, 17 x 22”.
Pacifica Radio Archives, 1971, broadcast Feb. 1971 and July 1971. Art and Technology / Clare Spark.
Series of interviews on the relationship between art and technology. Interview with Boyd Mefferd and Rockne Krebs (59 min.).
Art & Archives: Rite de Passage, 1971, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA.
Instagram reel: https://tinyurl.com/bp6kyd4y
Excerpts - Galleries: Rockne Krebs laser sculpture, Rockne Krebs: New Orleans Museum’s Light Man, Vieux Carre Courier, October 15-21, 1971.
“The New Orleans art world will jump into the space age with both feet come November when the New Orleans Museum of Fine Arts (alias Delgado) turns on its new laser sculpture…
Four Rectangles, Smoke Drawing Series, 1973
Candle smoke, airbrush, ink and graphite on paper. 20 × 30”
Published April 2024 on Instagram https://tinyurl.com/2vmetjuj
Artists at Work ~ Artpark 1975
2009 Art Spaces Archives Project -oral history transcript - interview w/ David Katzive, Artpark Visual Arts Director. "I liked it if artists did something that really connected to something that was inherently there. Rockne Krebs said he wanted to have his lasers come from the power plant. I thought, Oh, wow, great, even though it was on the Canadian side. They wouldn’t let him across the border..." David Katzive.
Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/4ee26j6d
The Studio, 1976 - 1737 Johnson Ave. NW, Washington, DC. Recently found negatives in Krebs' photograph collection. Published Feb 23, 2016
Sun Dog, 1976. Solar and laser installations for the U.S. Bicentennial Expo Science and Technology, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL. Commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1976 Sun Dog was the first work of art ever commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The One Night Stand, December 31, 1977 - January 1, 1978
Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD.
Fireworks by Zambelli Fireworks.
First time ever lasers and fireworks shown together.
Video on Facebook with music https://tinyurl.com/262z4v6e
Installation photographs from Krebs’s public art sculpture The White Tornado, 1979. Site-specific sculpture installed in the atrium of the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Topeka, KS. Commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration Art-in-Architecture Program.
Restoration completed by McKay Lodge Laboratory Fine Art Conservation in 2017.
Art & Archives: Still Green, 1979, The Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA.
“The early evening reception was hosted by Bonita and Jack Wrather, owners of Disneyland Hotel, who personally commissioned Krebs to create the sculpture for their 60-acrea, 1400-room facility…”
Rockne Krebs' Light Art, CBS National News, mid-1980's. "Rockne Krebs will always have the sun for a palette.”
Public art installation in the Miami International Airport. “To make them 8 feet long and out of transparent material resembles a Wonder Woman idea in some ways…” Rockne Krebs
“To make them 8 feet long and out of transparent material resembles a Wonder Woman idea in some ways…” Rockne Krebs, 1983 (Miami TV news interview)
Transparent Paper Airplanes, Rockne Krebs, 1983 / Part I / Miami International Airport, Miami, FL / Commissioned by Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places
Instagram reel with music https://tinyurl.com/snm3mspj
Transparent Paper Airplanes, 1983 / Part II / Miami International Airport, Miami, FL
Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/54ve465v
“To make them 8 feet long and out of transparent material resembles a Wonder Woman idea in some ways…” Rockne Krebs, 1983 (Miami TV news interview)
Commissioned by Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places
Drawings for Neo-Green, 1986. Neo-Green, urban-scale laser installation, Memorial Art Gallery and The University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 1987.
“…I think it might be helpful in your full appreciation of him, if I could tell you a little bit more about him and, what I perceive to be, his place in contemporary art.
Rockne Krebs is both a pioneer of laser art and a master of contemporary environmental sculpture..."
Video by Rockne Krebs, 1987. Digitized from vintage video footage in 2015. "Rockne Krebs' iconic Miami Line...lets you know, lest you forget, that you are in The Magic City." Aventura Magazine, 2012. “…The Miami Line, a magnificent public art work by Rockne Krebs …to create a brilliant, soaring line of colored light pulsing through the city’s heart, casting a magical shimmer of ever-changing color on the river.” Art Circuits, Miami Line Spans City with Art, 2012.
Video by Rockne Krebs, 1987. Digitized from vintage video footage. "Rockne Krebs' iconic Miami Line...lets you know, lest you forget, that you are in The Magic City." Aventura Magazine, 2012. “…The Miami Line, a magnificent public art work by Rockne Krebs …to create a brilliant, soaring line of colored light pulsing through the city’s heart, casting a magical shimmer of ever-changing color on the river.” Art Circuits, Miami Line Spans City with Art, 2012.
Crystal Willow, public art sculpture in Bethesda, MD. "Rockne Krebs was, by the 1970s, a major pioneer in public artworks." Public Art Review Magazine, 2012.
Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 National Artists Equity Association and Podesta Associates reception for the VARA of 1990 at the Russell Senate Office Building. Speakers: Senator Edward M. Kennedy; Congressman Robert W. Kastenmeier; Congressman Edward J. Markey; Honorable Ralph Oman, Register of Copyrights; Honorable John E. Frohnmayer, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts; George Koch, President of National Artists Equity; and Rockne Krebs, Vice President of National Artists Equity.
Love and LIGHT in 2024 - 30 years ago on NYE,
The Red River Bridge, Shreveport, LA.
Wishing you love & LIGHT in 2024
Commissioned by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council.
New Year’s Eve 1993 fifty couples were married just minutes after the Texas Street Bridge sculpture lighting in a mass ceremony ringing in the New Year.
Instagram reel: https://tinyurl.com/ycyepjf7
Canis Major and Good Luck World, 1996, CNN Center, Atlanta, GA, in celebration of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Two art installations were created utilizing the advanced laser technology available at their respective times. "Canis Major" was initially conceived with the relatively novel lasers that emerged in the early 1970s, while "Good Luck World," created in 1996, employed an innovative computer animation program specifically designed for laser projections.
Moon Archer, 1974, featured in Tracing Vision: Modern Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art, Carol A. Nathanson (Editor), 2011.
Excerpts from an insightful 2016 art review by Claudia Rousseau, Ph.D. in East City Art.
“The image is evocative of many things, from microscopic animals to galaxies meeting in deep space. This iconography seems to permeate all the works, alluding to both the microcosm and the macrocosm simultaneously, capturing the chance movements of the medium that mimic nature’s simplicity and mystery...”
Reel on Instagram https://tinyurl.com/476shwdj
Rockne Krebs: A pioneer of laser art and a master of contemporary environmental sculpture
2023 ILDA Conference, International Laser Display Association
Artistic Seminar
Presentation by Heather Krebs for ILDA members.
Rockne Krebs was an ILDA member in the mid-1990s to 2000.
Rockne Krebs: Horses
December 24, 2024
Today is Rockne Krebs’ birthday, born in 1938, he would have been 86. In celebration of his birthday and his art, we looked to his childhood photo album and a frequent subject in his art, horses. The photographs are of Rockne and his mother, Lorine Krebs in 1940, when he was 2 years old, in 1941, and in 1943 when he was 5 years old.
Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/bdz5s487