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- Atlas of the Stars
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows against corrugated steel

Atlas of the Stars

The Milky Way inspired this piece: swirling forms stream through space, some adazzle, some dim*, as if glowing through cosmic dust. A shimmering white curtain pierces the gridlines of altitude and azimuth–the strict physics of the universe can’t contain its hopeful reach. Soft white and violet-pink stars twinkle and gleam in an image of quiet joy. I could gaze at this one forever.

The artist began construction of this piece in March 2020, when the world shut down. It’s Lumencrafter’s beacon of hope.

Atlas of the Stars photographed in the drive shed and garden of our good neighbours, David Prentice, luthier, and Susette Godin, painter.

original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows in the garden by a cascade of deep purple clematis
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, reflected in window pane
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows in the garden by a cascade of deep purple clematis
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows against corrugated steel
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows against corrugated steel
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows against corrugated steel

Atlas under construction:

cutting the plywood frame for free-standing original LED light sculpture Atlas of the Stars on workbench
Measure twice…
pieces of the plywood frame for free-standing original LED light sculpture Atlas of the Stars on workbench
…cut once?
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, under construction on the pingpong table, front view
pingpong table makes a good work space
plywood frame for free-standing original LED light sculpture Atlas of the Stars on workbench
plywood frame
detail of etched ends of plywood frame for free-standing original LED light sculpture Atlas of the Stars on workbench
on the workbench
Reid scored the ends of Atlas with a dremel to create a softer, darker edge to the plywood frame for the Lumencrafter light sculpture, Atlas of the Stars.
etched ends of Atlas of the Stars
working on Atlas of the Stars, original LED light sculpture, checking out the violet-pink lighting
one set of lights installed
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, under construction on the pingpong table, side view of sanded acrylic tubes and wiring
sanded acryclic tubes
original LED light sculpture, violet-pink and white light, free-standing, slightly more than 2 feet square, glows against corrugated steel
from the back

For more about this sculpture, click here; for more information about Lumencrafter art, and commissioning your bespoke LED polycarbonate light sculpture, click here.

*Some may have caught the words taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty, so here it is.

Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
       And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                     Praise Him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

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