Dorothy Tanner

Mel Tanner (September 26, 1925 - October 21, 1993) was an American light sculptor, painter, installation artist, and videographer. His wife, Dorothy Tanner (January 30, 1923 - July 23, 2020), was an American light sculptor, installation artist, musician, videographer, and spoken word artist based in Denver, Colorado. The couple worked very closely for over 40 years. Their main project was the creation of Lumonics that consists of their light sculptures, live projection, video, electronics, and music as a total art installation. Author and art historian, Michael Betancourt, described this visual music performance work as a Gesamtkunstwerk in his book, The Lumonics Theater: The Art of Mel & Dorothy Tanner, published in 2004.


Mel Tanner was a World War II veteran and attended art school under the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill. He first attended Pratt Institute and then the Brooklyn Museum Art School, studying painting with instructors including Max Beckmann, John Ferren, and Reuben Tam. When Dorothy first visited Mel Tanner's basement studio in Brooklyn in 1950, he painted in a pointillist style, using a palette knife rather than a brush, and mixing paint with beeswax to give the paintings texture and dimensionality. He later painted on raw canvas, creating big loose shapes in the action painting style.


Dorothy Tanner studied woodcarving with Chaim Gross at the Educational Alliance, sculpture with Aaron Goodleman at the Jefferson School of Social Science, life drawing with Gabor Peterdi and sculpture with Milton Hebald at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She met Mel Tanner while they were both students at the Brooklyn Museum School, and married in 1951.


The Tanners moved to Syracuse, New York in 1951 and founded the Syracuse Art Workshop where Dorothy taught sculpture and Mel taught painting. They taught art to children in a summer program at Syracuse University. The residence in Syracuse had a carriage house in the rear where Dorothy set up her studio, working with materials including wood, clay, plaster, and polyester, and the high ceilings enabled her to build large metal sculptures. She exhibited her new metal sculptures in a solo show at the Key Gallery in New York City in 1962, and Mel Tanner exhibited his new paintings which combined calligraphy and geometric shapes at Key that same year. Their exhibitions stimulated them to return to Manhattan. Decades later, Ms.Tanner reflected on her view of the New York art of the early 1960s:


In 1963, the Tanners returned to New York City, where they founded Granite Gallery, an artist cooperative. They formed the Granite Art Association, which organized seminars, forums, and exhibitions, including The New Face in Art Forum and Exhibition in 1964 which took place at the Loeb Student Center at New York University. Participants included artists Louise Nevelson, Red Grooms, Norman Carton, and art critic Gordon Brown. The Tanners co-curated The New Face in Art Exhibition and showed their work with artists that included Louis Schanker, Murray Hantman, and Leo Quanchi. In 1965, they closed the Gallery and traveled extensively in Europe.

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