Lux Nova and Grande Generations
By Tom Wachunas
“Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage
of opportunity and strength.” -
Betty Friedan
“Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one's life
properly.”
- Miriam Makeba
“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a
work of art.” - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
If you missed the
announcement and unveiling of Patrick G. Buckohr’s latest public art work,
here’s a link to the June 18 Repository article to provide some background.
What I find
most striking about this work of free-standing
figural sculpture is how - amid all its lavishly modern materiality (galvanized
steel bands and tubular rings framing 799 recycled colored glass beer bottle
bottoms) – it resonates powerfully with some very old ideas about the efficacy of
light and color to generate spiritually loaded sensations for the viewer. I
don’t mean ‘spiritually’ in reference to a particular religious practice or
doctrine necessarily, but rather in
the broad sense of an emotionally elevating aesthetic experience.
That said, there
certainly is the evocation of stained glass church windows. Lux nova (new light) was the 12th
century term that described the ethereal effects of light filtered through those
magnificently colored windows of Gothic cathedrals – windows that were intended
to focus attentions on sacred narratives. On a purely formal/structural level,
Buckohr’s sculpture recalls, in its abstracted way, the intricate craft of
fitting shapes of colored glass into a network held together then by lead
strips (called cames) and composing
them like pieces of a puzzle. And at its conceptual core, his elegant work does
indeed tell an important story – that of our elder citizens transferring and
releasing the wisdom gleaned from their life experiences to their children.
The sculpture
remained vivid in my mind for several hours after seeing it during the daylight
unveiling on June 22. During those hours, there was a persistent, uncanny sort
of prompting that resulted in finding the following quotes that harmonize with
what I was sensing shortly before nightfall on that day. Here they are.
“People are like
stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when
the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from
within.” - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece
of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves.”
-Adrienne Clarkson
“We must shine with hope, stained glass
windows that shape light into icons, glow like lanterns borne before a
procession. Who can bear hope back into the world but us...” - Marge Piercy
The prompting didn’t
stop there. I found this, from Abbot Suger, who articulated the beginnings of
the Gothic aesthetic in France during the 1130s: “…Bright is the noble work; but being nobly bright, the work should
lighten the minds, so that they may travel…”
Travel indeed. I
went back that night at 10:00 on a twenty-minute drive to see the sculpture
illuminated. While such a modest investment of time and miles may not merit
being called a pilgrimage in any large sense, it was nonetheless a necessary
final step to fully embracing the beauty of Buckohr’s vision. Its luminous
chromatic glow is breathtaking, and speaks lovingly of reverence, celebration,
and inspiration.
What was old is new
again.
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