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Bruce Monro, 61 years old, was born on June 2nd, 1959 in London. At the age of 9 he already had a passion for art and growing up remembers getting in trouble often for daydreaming in class. Monro went to college at Bristol Polytechnic and received a bachelors degree in Fine Arts. After college, Monro took a break from art and worked a variety of other jobs from bricklaying and cooking. During this time he also went on an eye opening trip to Australia that would later impact many of his works. Eventually he landed a job as an illustrator which rekindled his passion for making art. Before setting off to commercially produce art, Monro believed he needed career experience so he started his own illuminated display company, Neo Neon Pty Ltd. This experience with light would later carry over as a stepping stone to his career as a light artist. Finally in 1995, Munro commits to his artistic passions and creates his first few light art exhibitions for Round House, Black Swan Gallery, Frome, and Somerset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of Monro’s goals when creating his light art pieces was to keep the art relatively low budget. As a result, many of his works are done using everyday items like CDs, water bottles, and tents. Some of projects do make use of more intricate materials such as LEDs, halogen lights, optical fibers, and glass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conceptually, many of Monro’s works are inspired mainly from nature. Wether he’s attempting to mimic different natural occurrences like rain or rivers or even integrate his artwork into the landscape itself, he tries to capture the essence of the given environment through lights. Monro also draws inspiration from literature and recorded past experiences. He maintains a journal of ideas that he started long before commercially making art that he pulls ideas from. He also bases artworks off books, articles, and scientific research that he’s read in the past. Monro also has a fascination of different languages, and will often try to incorporate sound into his artworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Field of Lights is Monro’s most well known works of light art. During his trip to Australia in is early days after college, he was inspired by both the energy, heat, and brightness as well as the blanket of stars in the Red Desert. In the Field of Lights, he tries to replicate this duality through his use of color. His use of warm colors captures that same heat and energy of the desert during the day, and his use of cool colors embodies the blanket of stars above the desert at night. In terms of composition of the artwork, the glass bulbs each have optical fibers threaded through their acrylic stems. In addition, some versions of the Field of Light also have large webs of optical fibers sprawled between the stems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another famous artwork inspired from Monro’s trip to Australia is his CDSea. While he was at the Sydney Harbor beach, he sat on a rock right next to the water and was entranced by the light dancing on top of the water. After dipping his hand into the water he felt a connection to his father’s home which became an “unforgettable turning point in [his] life” as he noticed light’s ability to positively transform his mood. It wasn’t until years later when he finally became a light artist did come back to this memory to recreate the shining river. The actual composition of the artwork consists of just 600,000 CDs, which were donated to him from across the world. Staying true to the family connection he felt originally, he created this work through the help of his family and friends to lay out all of the CDs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving to one of Monro’s more literature inspired artworks, Water Towers is based off a book he read at the age of 21 called The Gifts of Unknown Things<\/em><\/span> by Lyall Watson. The premise of the book involved a girl who saw sounds through color, which is known as Color Synthesia. Lyall Watsom also believed that Earth’s atmosphere has a natural pulse that beats 69 times a day. As a result, Monro created 69 water towers in his work, which change colors based on the music emitting from them. The music itself is of songs originating from countries all across the world as a touch of Monro’s fascination of languages. Each tower is made out of about 200 plastic water bottles with optic fibers coiled around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, building off of Monro’s interest in language, he was especially intrigued by morse code which became the basis for his SOS project. Starting his work, he was originally inspired by his love of camping in tents. However an article he read about Shelterbox, a charity that provides aid and shelter to people affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crisis, tied the piece together with the tent shelters and the SOS morse code message for help. The composition of the work is fairly basic, with each tent containing speakers and LED lights. The speakers play sounds of an old radio as the tents slowly change colors, which is occasionally abruptly interrupted by an SOS distress signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.brucemunro.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/47-Sensorio-Copyright-%C2%A9-2019-Bruce-Munro.-All-rights-reserved.-Photography-by-Serena-Munro-e1569323511542.jpg\")
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