Larry Lagin talks about his passion for art following a 40-year career as a scientist
At an early age, Larry Lagin knew he wanted to become a scientist and he also had a love for the arts. After a lengthy career of solving scientific problems, he now blends his knowledge of science into art while reaching out to the community and encouraging young people to dream big.
Lagin, who has been described as a Renaissance man by many of his friends and colleagues, worked for 40 years as a scientist trying to recreate the energy of the stars. His desire in trying to tame nature by creating order out of chaos led him to work on the nation’s leading fusion projects. He worked on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor project at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and served as a deputy project manager for the Lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s largest and most energetic laser.
After retiring from LLNL in 2014, Lagin returned to the classroom but this time instead of science he focused on art. Lagin began taking classes in a specialized drawing certificate program at the University of California Berkeley Extension. In 2018, he also completed a graduate certificate program in visual arts, specializing in painting. At that time, Lagin started renting studio space at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore, where he now is a resident artist. He regularly participates in art shows and art fairs in the Tri-Valley and throughout the Bay Area. During this time, he knew he wanted to give back to the community and share his passion for art.
Since then, his contributions to the community continues to grow. The list includes online exhibits to in-person audiovisual exhibits to producing plays with Livermore Shakespeare Festival, now Shakespeare’s Performing Arts Regional Company (SPARC).
For several years, he led PPPL’s “Science on Saturdays” outreach program for high school students and later started it at LLNL in 1997 shortly after starting to work at the Lab. He assisted with the “Sketches in Code: Randomness & Patterns in Science and Art” exhibit that explored how art and science intersect to create digital works reflecting the natural world. He created a Holocaust art and multimedia exhibit, which was based on photographs from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, at the Bothwell Arts Center.
He subsequently took that exhibit on tour to high schools in the East Bay to educate students about the Holocaust, and help found the East Bay Holocaust Education Center (EBHEC), a non-profit to provide Holocaust education to people of all faiths in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since being founded in January 2021 in Pleasanton, EBHEC has provided more than 20 Holocaust education events, many of them free to the public, several of them art- related. For example, EBHEC sponsored a Student Art and Writing Contest with the theme “Why is it Important to Remember the Holocaust?” and awarded $3,500 in prize money to 15 local-area students. It also sponsored free student-friendly films in partnership with the East Bay Jewish International Film Festival that were streamed and shown at the Vine Cinema in Livermore. The organization also collaborated with SPARC to produce a staged reading of Diane Samuel’s Holocaust-based “Kindertransport” in 2021 and are planning to produce more in the future.
“I have always been involved in outreach programs,” Lagin said. “During the past several years, I have also worked closely with the staff at the Quest Science Center and Lisa
Tromovitch, the artistic director of SPARC, to help them produce a series of science-based plays working in collaboration with LLNL scientists.”
This program, called “Science@Play,” gives people of color the opportunity to write the plays, working with Lab scientists to make sure the science is accurate. Together they have produced plays on COVID research and climate change.
Most recently, Lagin helped spearhead the creation of a large mural near downtown Livermore honoring NASA astronauts with ties to LLNL, Sandia National Laboratories, the Livermore arts community and the Tri-Valley area. Lagin worked with Thomasin Dewhurst, Anne Giancola and Matt Finders on the mural.
The mural, located off Railroad Avenue and North K Street, features five astronauts, including Jeff Wisoff, principal associate director of NIF and Photon Science; Tammy Jernigan, former senior adviser to the Laboratory Director’s Office of Defense Coordination; José Hernández, the son of Mexican migrant farmworkers and a former LLNL engineer for 15 years; Leroy Chiao, the commander of Expedition 10 on the International Space Station, graduate of Monte Vista High School in Danville and former LLNL researcher; and Ellen Ochoa, former researcher at Sandia National Laboratories and the former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
He is currently working to bring “Violins of Hope” to Livermore and surrounding communities in February 2023. Violins of Hope is a collection of restored violins that were played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. The instruments survived concentration camps, ghettos and massacres and serve as a reminder of the many stories of injustice, suffering, resilience and survival. Besides three for-pay concerts at the Bankhead planned for Feb. 5-7, there will be a free exhibit at the Bankhead open to the public during the first two weeks of February. He also will bring the violins for free concerts to all 30 middle schools and high schools in the Tri-Valley.
Science meets art
Lagin likes the mantra, “science, like art, is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration” and describes his creative process like exploring new scientific discoveries.
“A lot of people say that art and science are very different,” Lagin said. “I think that’s just totally false. With science, you must be extremely precise, and some artists are very precise, too. I am an impressionistic artist though, which is not precise, and I purposely chose not to be precise.”
Lagin said with art he starts with a blank canvas and focuses on being creative and seeing where it takes him.
“I think about what I am going to do, just like in a science project, and then I start doing some planning and I just start doing it and I make decisions and choices along the way,” he explained. “It’s like a science project and like a process of discovery.”
Lagin describes his paintings as energetic and expressionist. He said he wants people to look at his paintings and feel the energy, both within him and within themselves.
“I gave this a lot of thought and I definitely see a great correlation of my career in science and in fusion where I was essentially trying to create a sun on Earth by essentially trying to tame chaos — and my art, trying to create order with brash strokes of the brush,” he said.
Encouraging future scientists, artists
“There’s such an emphasis today about students going into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers,” he said. “I certainly did but I always felt that art has definitely put the STEAM in STEM for me.”
Lagin said science allows people to search and discover truth about nature and the world.
“This is very important to the advancement of mankind,” he said. “Studying art and humanities is equally important to mankind especially for people to discover truth about themselves and others. I get a lot of gratification out of doing art because it’s a creative type of process and I will continue to help educate and reach out to others.”
