licongallery - electric architectural sculptures by Carl Baumann

Postlogue - 2003

"A Light in the Dark" - 1932

Among the more pleasant memories of 1930's childhood is being awakened in the late of night by the steam engine sounds of a "slow freight" as it passed by a block east of my suburban New Jersey home, huffing and puffing upgrade on its way from the Weehauken Terminal to points north in upstate New York. The throaty two-tone steam whistle sounded at each of the several grade crossings in town, gradually fading into the northerly night. These were comforting sounds, reassuring me that I was safely at home, and not in the strange faraway places of the dreams from which I'd been awakened.

I'd usually fall right back into sleep, but one night there came another, gentler sound, close behind that of the receding freight train--the clippity-clop of a slow-moving horse-drawn milkwagon, making its pre-dawn deliveries to my neighborhood. A pause in the clippity-clop sound would be filled in with the clinkety-clink of basketed milk bottles being hurriedly carried to the milk boxes on the doorsteps and porches of our street.

I arose from bed to see the maker of all that clatter. What I saw from the streetside window of my room was a distant light in the dark, moving slowly and intermittently towards me, barely illuminating the vehicle which carried it. Horse-drawn wagons didn't need headlights--the horses knew where they were going and what they were doing. The only light needed, a kerosene lantern, hung in the cab, and was for the milkman to load up his delivery basket with the right products for the households along his route...So there was this single point of light moving towards me in the dark, a fascinating vision indelibly implanted in my child's mind...As you may have noticed, it's still with me!

That light in the dark, and especially the moving light in the dark, became the germseeds of a later fascination with a constructed form of sculpture. Designed to be seen in the dark, they become visible by the lighting effects built into them. These things are called "LiCons" (lighted constructions), and you're invited to have a look. And bring the kid in yourself, or else you might not "get it!"

RAILYARD - 2001

Constructed of wood, matboard, metal & plastic; with fiber-optic lighting.

32" x 19" x 2" deep

Owned by Baumann family friend

Last Word - Really!

Much of my youth was spent happily building model trains and planes, these interests overcome in later teen years by football, basketball and cheerleaders. A first flight in a real airplane redirected my eyes to the sky, where they've been almost ever since. Thanks to WWII and the U.S. Navy, I learned to fly. The view from the air, combined with a post-war G.I. Bill training and subsequent experience in architecture and urban planning have been the keystones of my artistic vision ever since. Space, architecture and technology have been my long time companions.

I still fly as of this writing, but now my eyes look more down at familiar earthscapes than up into mystical space. My later works, such as "Megastructure on the Moon" and "Castle" portend a coming down to Earth again, and incorporate a first love of model trains in their contexts. My most recent works (as per preceding sample) are 3D airscapes of our rural and urban habitats, pleasing to contemplate, but not as "far out" as earlier themes. It seems I'm returning to whence I came, and so it goes...