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    Turrell Sees The Light

    Acclaimed artist James Turrell explains how he sees the light in wide-ranging inteview

    Tarra Gaines
    Sep 29, 2014 | 10:26 am

    Attempting to conduct a interview with the master of light, James Turrell, is a bit like trying to capture sunlight in your hand. No matter how focused the questions, the answers are going to spill through your fingers illuminating everything else in the room.

    Sailing, airport security, football and the simple joy of ordering vanilla ice cream with waffles — along with his art, of course — were among the subjects Turrell covered during a recent breakfast interview at the Houston Hilton-Americas. Turrell gained a titanium knee last year, which he lamented adds time going through security during his many travels to Europe and Asia for his commissions, but does make the 71-year-old more agile on his boat. Some of his recent excursions have been to Austin where has taken an interest in UT football while working on projects.

    After the breadth of topics we touched on, I realized when we finally turned to his art and Turrell said he was always interested in the “full light spectrum,” he could as easily have said the full life spectrum.

    After the breadth of topics we touched on, I realized when we turned to his art and Turrell said he was always interested in the “full light spectrum,” he could as easily have said the full life spectrum.

    Turrell comes to Houston several times a year, and he's known this city so long that he still speaks fondly of the Oilers under Bum Phillips' reign. Last week, he was back for a Hiram Butler Gallery show of prints created from his Guggenheim installation, Aten Reign, one of the three major exhibitions of his work in 2013 including James Turrell: A Retrospective at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’sThe Light Inside.

    In profiles, he’s been described using Santa Claus imagery, no doubt because of the robust white beard. But if I’d never experienced Turrell’s work firsthand, or first eyes, at the Live Oak Friends Meeting House, The Light Inside tunnel at the MFAH or sat gazing in meditative surprise at the radical vision of the Houston sky framed by Twilight Epiphany at Rice, and just knew of his work through online images and Wikipedia, I might have a vastly different perspective on the man.

    Let’s be honest, the Skyspaces spaced across the globe; the Perceptual Cells that enclose and then inundate individual viewers with blasts of light so strong they can see the interior of their own eyes; and most of all, his own private, extinct volcano that he’s been tunneling and carving for 40 years in order to shape nature’s most powerful force, light, to his will; all these “works” might seem less an indication of one of the most innovated artists in the world and more a description of the most awesome Bond villain ever.

    But after talking with Turrell for an hour, I think I can safely judge that if he did manage to take over the world from his volcano lair, he’d probably just decree that we do away with Daylight Savings Time (“It’s like people who are always late so they set their watch 15 minutes ahead and they’re still late. So we can get up and move anytime we want but to change the clock is ridiculous because it has to do with the rotation of the Earth.”) and then leave us to our own devices, as long as we take time to contemplate the light.

    A Rare Exhibition

    While not unprecedented, a Turrell show of prints is somewhat unusual for an artist who found his medium early: “Basically I always work the light.”

    So why attempt to distill distinct moments in a 60-minute light sequence that illuminated the interior of the Guggenheim into aquatint and woodcut relief printing?

    Turrell acknowledged with a chuckle what he asks from collectors. “I need a place that’s larger than your living room, and maybe you should buy the property next door. If it doesn’t sell like hotcakes whose fault is it?”

    One reason seems to be pragmatic. Turrell acknowledged with a chuckle what he asks from collectors. “I need a place that’s larger than your living room, and maybe you should buy the property next door. If it doesn’t sell like hotcakes whose fault is it?”

    “I haven’t made the things that help give you access to my work, the normal things of art: prints, photos, drawings, things like that. Now I’m beginning to fill that out so you can a little bit more of a piece of me easily and not have to buy a big space,” Turrell explained, adding that the process of turning light into print has given him something as well. “It allowed me to believe in the traditions of art. I didn’t want the object. I didn’t want the painting or the sculpture. I wanted the light. That sort of ran against the traditions of art.”

    When I saw the show a day before my meeting with Turrell these frozen images of light on paper, light for light’s own sake, felt very familiar, both cosmic and subatomic.

    When I asked Turrell if my seeing a galaxy and atom in the same print seemed true to him, he launched us into tales of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Turrell's own continuing relationship with the ellipse.

    “Nature loves the ellipse. It’s a beautiful form and it’s something I’ve always enjoyed working with,” he described and then gave some insight into that great life-long work. “The [Roden] Crater is in the form of the ellipse. The top of it is not a circle. It’s actually slightly elliptical, and so I had to do a lot of work with ellipses in making something that looked natural in the form of a volcano.”

    Light and Time

    Bringing us back to the Hiram Butler exhibition, I had to ask about the arrangement of the prints which partially depict the color transformation in Aten Reign. Many of his installations, including The Light Inside, Twilight Epiphany and The Color Inside at UT Austin put viewers through a changing color spectrum, in a way bringing time into relationship with the light. I asked him if timing light within these Skyspaces creates a story.

    “Well, it has a narrative. It does take you through that. This is not art without content. It’s without literal content, yes, but music also is without literal content.”

    But sometimes these timed light stories we experience don’t linger vividly forever, because we “forget the color. We don’t remember color very long,” Turrell says, and so perhaps even the master of light must then come back full circle — or full ellipse — to traditional art of light as color on paper.
    James Turrell: From the Guggenheim runs until Oct. 1 at Hiram Butler Gallery.

    James Turrell with Skyscape (file photo).

    James Turrell, Skyscape, May 2012
      
    Photo by © Michelle Watson CatchLightGroup.com
    James Turrell with Skyscape (file photo).
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    Houston's iconic Rothko Chapel receives new grant to restore Beryl damage

    Jef Rouner
    May 12, 2025 | 10:30 am
    Rothko Chapel exterior
    Courtesy of the Rothko Chapel
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    Houston's beloved Rothko Chapel is one step closer to recovery after Hurricane Beryl in 2024. A substantial new grant from Bank of America will fund the restoration of Mark Rothko pieces damaged by the storm.

    “This grant comes at a pivotal moment – not only for the Rothko Chapel, but in the broader context of our changing climate and growing vulnerability to extreme weather events,” said David Leslie, executive director of the Chapel. “The conservation process will require extensive time, specialized materials, and expert technical support to stabilize and restore these works, ensuring they can once again inspire visitors within this sacred space. Bank of America’s support underscores the urgent need to preserve culturally significant artworks like these, especially as we face new environmental challenges that threaten our artistic legacy.”

    The Bank of America Art Conservation Project has been used to fund the preservation and restoration of culturally significant artworks since 2010. In 2021, the project also funded the restoration of an 13th Century Incan textile housed at Houston's Menil Collection. This year's other recipients include the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in Mexico City, Sir John Soane's Museum in London, and the Sydney Opera House.

    Since 1971, Rothko Chapel has been one of the best meditative spaces in Houston. Commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil in 1964, Rothko designed the space and painted its famous black panels. Rothko himself did not live to see the completion, dying by suicide in New York in 1970. Now, the chapel stands as a non-denominational spiritual center, hosting concerts, mindfulness clinics, and other events designed to promote mental healing in visitors.

    When Hurricane Beryl hit Houston on July 8, high winds and torrential hammered the chapel's roof. Water leakage damaged the walls and one of Rothko's black triptychs on the east side of the building. It took seven months of work before the chapel was reopened to the public in December, but the damaged art was still housed off site for restoration. Bank of America's grant should hopefully speed up the process of returning the iconic pieces back to public view.

    “It is devastating to see the domino effects of an event like Hurricane Beryl, jeopardizing the storied institutions and culturally significant works that provide so much context into the Houston identity,” said Hong Ogle, President, Bank of America Houston. “I am very proud that Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project allows us to support the arts in a unique and impactful way and preserve the works that mean the most to our community.”

    In addition to the restoration, Rothko Chapel recently broke ground on a $42 million campus expansion. Two new buildings to the north with house administrative services and an archive, and a meditation garden dedicated to Kathleen and Chuck Mullenweg. A new program center will follow after.

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