For such a prominent– or at least, once prominent– work of public art, the Majic Wand (scroll down to previous entry) has had surprisingly little written about it. That’s odd, because it qualifies as notable both in terms of how the media measures the worthiness of such work, and how the art world does. The media traditionally measures the importance of a work of art by its price tag, and the Majic Wand cost six figures when it was installed in 1992. A very respectable, if not Van Gogh-ish, amount. And in purely artistic term, the installation is the work Rockne Krebs, one of the most important artists of the 20th century working with light displays, and one of the fathers of laser art. In 1968, a then 30-year old Krebs created the first three dimensional laser beam art installation.

But a Google search for the Majic Wand turned up nothing but the Long Beach Arts Council website (quoted in the previous entry), and the Wand’s name in a few lists of Krebs’ work. The combined cyber-omniscience of Nexis and Newslibrary.com archives search unearthed exactly two newspaper articles: a 1992 Press-Telegram story, and a story from the Riverside Press-Enterprise in 1994.

Pat O‘Brien, the Press-Enterprise reporter, found the Majic Wand– “beams of emerald-colored laser light that create geometric shapes in the Long Beach night sky”– quite impressive in 1994. It was one of the feature exhibits in O’Brien’s story on how pubic art can create community pride. The Wand “made a dramatic difference in the downtown area, which had been in an economic slump,” he wrote.

That assessment would seem to justify the optimism in Janet Wiscombe’s 1992 Press-Telegram story on the Majic Wand: “It will forever change the downtown night.”

That forever, however, looks a little too optimistic at the moment.

Tags: Arts Council of Long Beach, lasers, Lights Out Long Beach, Majic Wand, Pine Square, press telegram, Press-Enterprise, public art, Public Arts Program, Rockne Krebs