Sondheim’s Sunday - Rod Lathim

“Sondheim’s Sunday”

Vintage French Horn, solid and beaded neon, wood base

38” T x 25” W x 13” D

“Sondheim’s Sunday” is a luminous tribute to the rare moment when music becomes visual art — and visual art becomes music. Built upon a vintage French horn that floats above a pristine white base, the sculpture honors the horn as both instrument and voice: a gilded throat of memory, breath, and yearning, poised with its bell turned upward like an offering.

Blue and green neon glass traces the horn’s intricate inner labyrinth, illuminating the elegant architecture of brass tubing as though the instrument’s hidden pathways are being revealed — not merely as mechanics, but as the sacred map of sound. The curves glow like melodic contour lines, turning structure into lyric.

From the bell rises a clear neon flourish — a freeform, spiraling, billowing gesture of light that circles and arcs skyward. Inside this crystalline drawing-in-the-air, beads of white kinetic light travel endlessly through the glass, a stream of luminous motion that feels alive with breath and pulse. The sculpture becomes a visible score: a hymn of movement, a living phrase that never quite ends.

The work is a reverent nod to “Sunday,” from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George — one of this artist’s most beloved musical anthems. In that song, the French horn emerges as a perfect voice: majestic, solitary, and emotionally precise — lifting the story toward its final revelation. Inspired by Georges Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” the sculpture reflects the work’s quiet intensity: the gathering of countless details into one unified vision.

As the musical builds to its breathtaking tableau — the world of the painting assembled, suspended in time — the final echo of a solo French horn arrives like a last brushstroke. This piece is that moment made physical: the goosebumps made luminous. A celebration of Sondheim’s genius, Seurat’s devotion, and the mysterious place where art forms merge — where light can sing.