James Turrell is an artist who uses light as his main medium.
Inspiration
As a child in a Quaker family, James Turrell was about to be introduced to the Meeting. He asked his grandmother to explain what it was all about, he said "her explanation to me was you went inside to greet the light. And this idea, to go inside to find that light within, literally, as well as figuratively, was something that really propelled me at the time. I really thought that that's what I should do."
Goal
He aims to change viewers' perception with his work and envelope them in the art
He creates passages that allow the audience to see only the stars, enabling them to watch the earth's rotation. Other passages erase the horizon, capturing the sky.
He creates light tunnels to have viewers enter and be enclosed in light
Roden Crater: started in 1972, still not complete. how much did it cost?
"two marriages and a relationship..."
the Meeting House in Houston
originally the idea of Hiram Butler
"the meeting of the space that you're in with the meeting of the space of the sky."
Philosophy
"I want to feel light physically. We drink it as vitamin D; it's actually a food. We are heliotropic, and it has a big effect on the skin, produces vitamin D. We also have a big psychological relation to light. All or most experiences, near death experiences, are described with a vocabulary of light. So, for me, this quality to feel light exists, almost like we see it in a dream."
-James Turrell
