"I spent seven months flying the Western states, sleeping
under the wing of the plane, and every third night staying
in a Holiday Inn, to clean up. And every site that I saw
that was interesting generated new work, or new ideas."
"Color is this response to what we are perceiving.
So there isn't something out there that we perceive, we
are actually creating this vision, and that we are responsible
for it is something we're rather unaware of."
"People talk about spiritual in art, and I think that's
been the territory of artists all along. You know, if you
go into the great cathedrals made by architects and through
the light of artisans, you have created a sense of awe that
often is greater than what people feel when they read, or
any sort of rhetoric by the priesthood. This is something
that can be very powerful in a visual sense."
Well, right now we're on top
of Roden Crater, which is on the western edge of Painted Desert.
And we're looking at the San Francisco peaks volcanic field.
There are over four hundred craters; this is one of them.
And this is the easternmost crater, perhaps tied with South
Sheba. So this is a new crater in this field, but it's about
380,000 years old.
ART:21:
How did you find this spot?
TURRELL:
I flew over the Western states
looking for likely spots and opportunities. This was my first
choice, and there were two others. One other I still have
the mining lease on. And this has been mined a little bit
also, and was also a motorcycle hill climb. So it had its
uses at the time.
ART:21:
Could you describe your first
sighting of Roden Crater, how you knew this would be the one
you wanted to use?
TURRELL:
I was coming over the field
from the west, actually about this time of day, about four-thirty
in the afternoon, in November. And the sun was just about
ready to set a little bit earlier in the winter. And I saw
the craters in this field. There were two that I sort of looked
at: one was S.P. Mountain, that flat one over there, and Antelope
Hill, another one on the Babbitt Range. And I saw this one.
This is really beautiful when the sun hits it in the afternoon
because you really get the red and the black, that separation
of the two craters from the west side. And it really stood
out. The nice thing about it was that it was off by itself,
so it didn't have other volcanoes that would be in the horizon
when you were inside it. So I landed out here and just walked
up into it, and stayed overnight here, just went all around
it. Then I went in to the county seat, which is Flagstaff,
the next day to see how it was owned. And actually it was
privately held, so I thought, "Oh, should be able to get this."
That's another story. (LAUGHS)
ART:21:
A long story I imagine.
TURRELL:
Anyway, that was how I found
it. I spent seven months flying the Western states, sleeping
under the wing of the plane, and every third night staying
in a Holiday Inn, to clean up. And every site that I saw that
was interesting generated new work, or new ideas. So it was
really a rich time for me.
ART:21:
What started you on a quest for
this place?
TURRELL:
Well, my interest is working
with light and space. And you got light and you got space,
there's no doubt of that. And it's always something to work
with light in the outdoors. That's something that I wanted
to do, wanted to shape space, to use the light that was here
naturally. Also, I wanted to use the very fine qualities of
light. First of all, moonlight. Also, there's a space where
you can see your shadow from the light of Venus alone - things
like this. And also wanted to gather starlight that was from
outside, light that's not only from outside the planetary
system which would be from the sun or reflected off of the
moon or a planet, but also to emanate light from the galactic
planes where you've got this older light that's away from
the light even of our galaxy. So that is light that would
be at least three and a half billion years old. So you're
gathering light that's older than our solar system. And it's
possible to gather that light, it takes a good bit of stars
to do that, and a good look into older skies, away from the
Milky Way. You can gather that light and physically have that
in place so that it's physically present to feel this old
light. Now that's a blended light, of course, but it's also
red-shifted, so it's a different tone of light than we're
normally used to. But that's something that you can do here
in a place like this, where you have good, dark skies. So
to have this sort of old blended light and to have this sort
of new, eight and a half minute old light from the sun - it's
like having the Beaujolais and then having a finer, older
mature blend [of wine] as well. And I wanted to look at light
that way, because to feel it physically, almost as we taste
things, was a quality I wanted. And this is where you can
work with light like that.
ART:21:
Why do you want to work with
light?
TURRELL:
Certainly when people describe
near death experiences, they use a vocabulary of light. And
also when we have dreams, a lucid dream that's in this color,
that really is I think quite, quite astonishing. So, in thinking
of light, if we can think about what it can do, and what it
is, by thinking about itself, not about what we wanted it
to do for other things, because again we've used light as
people might be used, in the sense that we use it to light
paintings. We use it to light so that we can read. We don't
really pay much attention to the light itself. And so turning
that and letting light and sound speak for itself is that
you figure out these different relationships and rules. Now
there's a lot to do with sensory synesthesia
as well, in that the feeling of light in so many ways - you
probably have seen or handled a lemon and suddenly felt the
taste in your mouth. I mean it suddenly floods your mouth.
The perception through vision actually creates the sensation
in taste. The same thing can happen in sound and sound can
change the perception of color.
We think of color as a thing that we're receiving. And if
you go into one of the sky spaces, you can see that it's possible
to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don't change
the color of the sky, but I changed the context
of vision. This is very similar to simultaneous contrast,
where you see a yellow dot on a blue field, versus the yellow
dot on a red field. Same yellow dot will be seen as two different
colors. The same frequencies come into your eyes through a
difference of context of vision, and are perceived differently.
We actually create this color. Color is this response to what
we are perceiving. So there isn't something out there that
we perceive, we are actually creating this vision, and that
we are responsible for it is something we're rather unaware
of. So I actually like to do that, and I look at my art as
being somewhere between the limits of perception of the creature
that we are, that is - what we can actually perceive and not
perceive, like the limits of hearing or seeing - and that
of learned perception, or we could call prejudice perception.
That's a situation where we have learned to perceive a certain
way, but we're unaware of the fact that we learned it. So
this can actually work against you sometimes. Working between
those limits and kind of pointing them out is something I
enjoy doing because it's not just the fact that you are bringing
the cosmos down into the space where you live, but that your
perception helps create that as well. So that you really are
this co-creator of what you're seeing.
People talk about spiritual in
art, and I think that's been the territory of artists all
along. You know, if you go into the great cathedrals made
by architects and through the light of artisans, you have
created a sense of awe that often is greater than what people
feel when they read, or any sort of rhetoric by the priesthood.
This is something that can be very powerful in a visual sense.
And so the artists have always been involved in this; this
is not something new. And I think that sometimes it's easier
for people to approach that portion of the spiritual through
the visual than through organized religion, and perhaps that's
true today. But I also want to say that the senses and gratification
through the senses, while it can direct you toward the spiritual,
is also something that will hold you from it fully. That's
the limits of art, and so I don't think that art is terribly
spiritual, but it's something that can be along that way,
be a gesture toward that.
