" During the forties I was experimenting with both acrylic and polyester plastics, with fluorescent dyes and pigments, and spent a couple of months researching a cinematographic approach to kinetic sculpture based on what I described as ‘multiplanar sequential image projection.’

In 1951 I constructed an eight-bladed stroboplane to test the principle, and demonstrated the device in a one-man show in Los Angeles a year later.

Along with some drawings on plaster I also displayed a cluster of transparent fluorescent sculptures illuminated by black light.

These latter triggered my first publicity break—
a full page color reproduction in Time. "

Quoted from – Artist and Computer

—

" Color In The Dark

Time was when all an artist needed to express himself was a stain, a stick and a space. But modern technology offers artists a thousand new ways of creating, and artists must concern themselves with means as well as ends. One of the newest mediums is the invention of California’s Robert Mallary. 34, whose experiments in color and design are now on view in a Sacramento gallery.

Mallary is probably the only artist who ever chose to do most of his work in the dark. He molds his abstract sculptures from transparent acetate, paints them with luminous pigments which glow only under ultraviolet “black light.” Hung from wires and set gently twirling in a dark room, his mobiles resemble pallid but unfad­ing fireworks. Like fireworks, each combines three-dimensional form, color and mo­tion in a single work. all glowing eerily in the invisible beams of ultraviolet lights. "

Originally printed in Time Magazine, March 10, 1952, pp. 82-83

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