James Turrell: Look at What the Light Did Now (Glasstire)
by Jessica Fuentes January 1, 2025 (GlassTire)
I am enamored with light. In my everyday life, I often am distracted by the playful dancing of light and shadows projected through windows and onto the interior space of my home. Walking through art venues I am captivated by installations by artists like Olafur Elíasson, Robert Irwin, Ellsworth Kelly, and Dan Flavin. The works by these particular artists are meditative — the light in the works shifts the viewer’s perception (and in turn perspective) in subtle ways. So, when a new James Turrell Skyspace announced its opening in my hometown of Fort Worth, I jumped at the opportunity to attend a preview of the installation.
Keith House
The Skyspace, titled Come to Good, is situated within Keith House, a nonprofit meeting space that sits along the Trinity River, a connective line through the city where people bike and walk and that is dotted with playgrounds, restaurants, and other communal spaces. The meeting room at Keith House is arranged like many other Quaker meeting spaces, with pews that are all on the same level (none raised higher on a platform or stage) and face each other. While the intention is to create a place where all are equal and arranged in a somewhat intimate manner, looking directly at each other, I imagine with a full house it could feel intimidating, or perhaps simply vulnerable. Though, for viewing the installation that might never be an issue as Come to Good occupies the ceiling and pulls the viewer’s attention upwards. Over the course of 40 minutes, a light sequence unfolds around a square-shaped hole that reveals the sky. Because of the duration of the experience, viewers can bring pillows or blankets and are welcome to lie down. As the sequence began, I removed my shoes and quickly laid across a pew.
In the first minutes, my mind raced. I stared at the square-shaped sky and considered the TV screen, which was originally more square-shaped than it is now. I thought about the screens that we stare at and how they are made up of pixels, tiny squares of light. Perhaps my mind went there because I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately. I reflected on why I’ve been doing this. I’m not watching the news, rather I’m revisiting and binging old favorites. It is a source of comfort in what has been a tumultuous season. I inundate myself with these things because doing so enables me to turn off my brain. The TV acts as a wall, a dam, an impenetrable structure that keeps my brain from delving too deeply into the realities of this moment.
As I considered these things, the colored light of the ceiling slowly shifted, altering my perception of the color of the sky. Within the space, white light shifted to fuschia and then to aqua, causing the sky to change from bright blue to a more muted tone and then nearly purple. I quickly looked out the window to assess the reality of the sky, but realized that the windows are tinted and cannot reveal the truth. So, I relaxed into the uncertainty of the experience. Looking back at the square I considered how Turrell’s piece, unlike staring at a screen, acted as a sieve, allowing my thoughts to pour through the experience of close looking. Come to Good was a conduit that did not suppress my inner dialogue but channeled it through me.
The lights continued to fluctuate to lighter and darker shades of purple and blue and then to orange and pink, even at one moment a bright green. Simultaneously the sky was both darkening as time passed and being affected by the adjacent light. It was like experiencing an animated Josef Albers color theory work but without the knowledge of the truth of the colors.