It’s like looking through an eyeball,” say some who exit the James Turrell Skyspace work “The Way of Color.”
Still others say it’s like the piece, located on the Art Trail at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, brings the sky closer to the viewer. And that’s sort of the idea with “The Way of Color,” one of Turrell’s more than 75 such Skyspaces located throughout the country.
“The title that James Turrell picked quite explains the experience the guests will have,” says Sara Segerlin, Crystal Bridges’ senior museum educator for public programs and a facilitator for the programs inside the piece. “The Skyspace explores the sky. All of that changes naturally. Not only does he (Turrell) focus and frame the sky, he created a computer program that enhances it.”
Working with the color theory and the full color palette, LED lights flash above the viewers, who sit inside the large, round structure made of stone and half buried in a green hillside. All eyes are pointed upward toward a hole in the ceiling, which under normal conditions offers a simple window to the sky above. But during sunrise and sunset, a 35- to 40-minute program of internal lights get beamed somewhat imperceptibly around the circle. The changing colors inside change the way viewers perceive the sky above them.
On a recent morning, the blue sky was no longer blue; it was a shifting array of greens and reddish-gray, then purplish, all while the natural sky just outside the work moved very mechanically from darknessinto a bright, blue-white, sunny morning.
“Every day is different, depending on temperature and cloud levels. A more humid day turns it into a grainy space,” Segerlin says.
The wonderment of Turrell’s work certainly stirs in those who visit his Northwest Arkansas installation, but his reach is international. Turrell,just as he does in “The Way of Color,” always works with light and shape. He started alongside other light artists of the 1960s, but he’s the subject of much attention right now.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is currently showing a retrospective spanning nearly 50 years of his work. Turrell’s “Aten Reign” debuts today in New York City’s famed Guggenheim Museum as a site-specific work that transforms the rotunda.
The New York Times magazine recently profiled Turrell in depth under the headline “How James Turrell Knocked the Art World Off Its Feet.”
Turrell’s “The Way of Color” debuted at Crystal Bridges more than two years before the museum opened its doors in November 2011.
At the beginning, with it so far physically removed from a museum that wasn’t yet constructed, the public didn’t know what to do with it,Segerlin says. But the work is getting more focus, and starting on Saturday, it will be open on select mornings in addition to the ongoing Friday-at-sunset sessions.
In the spirit of the summer solstice - which takes place today - Crystal Bridges will host a full day of programming inside or near the Skyspace on Saturday. Guests will have the opportunity to go inside and see the color show or hear live music just outside.
Events will open with a sunrise session inside the Skyspace - limited to about 35 guests because of space restrictions - and continue with a yoga session, followed by music in the afternoon and evening. Just before the sunset session inside the work, a group of local musicians will perform the large-scale percussion piece “Inuksuit” by John Luther Adams.
The evening will conclude with a star-watching sessionled by the Arkansas/Oklahoma Astronomical Society as live jazz music plays.
Other solstice events taking place Saturday at Crystal Bridges include:
6, 10 and 11 a.m. - Sunrise Yoga, south lawn
Sunrise to sunset - Craig Colorusso’s “Sun Boxes,” Art Trail
6:30-7:15 p.m. - Solstice welcome, Art Trail and Skyspace
7:15-8:15 p.m. - Percussion performance of John Luther Adams’ “Inuksuit,” Skyspace hillside
8:30-9:10 p.m. - Clarinetist Amatai Vardi, inside Skyspace
9:30-10:30 p.m. - Starlight Jazz, Skyspace Ampitheater
9:30-10:30 p.m. - Star gazing with telescopes, near Skyspace
Whats Up, Pages 11 on 06/21/2013