At Roden Crater, I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces. I wanted to bring culture to the natural surround as if one was designing a garden. – James Turrell
I used to think that only people who were crazy were attracted to the desert, but once you’ve lived there, you become that way anyway. – James Turrell
I know that science is very interested in answers, and I’m just happy with a good question. – James Turrell
It’s difficult for people to visualize from my drawings what it’s going to be, so I often find myself talking them into things that they go along with, and when they see what’s been made, they are surprised. – James Turrell
I haven’t been that great at attending my own openings. Still, I’m learning to enjoy this a lot more than I used to. – James Turrell
This wonderful elixir of light is the thing that actually connects the immaterial with the material – that connects the cosmic to the plain everyday existence that we try to live in. – James Turrell
I’m working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit. – James Turrell
I always thought that people who live in the desert are a little crazy. It could be that the desert attracts that kind of person, or that after living there, you become that. It doesn’t make much difference. But now I’ve done my 40 years in the desert. – James Turrell
There’s traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that’s the last thing on an artist’s mind. – James Turrell
Usually we are illuminating things instead of looking at the light itself. But I like this quality of the light being the revelation. – James Turrell
The sky always seems to be out there, away from us. I like to bring it down in close contact with us, so you feel you are in it. We feel we are at the bottom of this ocean of air; we are actually on a planet. – James Turrell
The people in L.A. do orient themselves to light. I used to call it ‘Tan Fascist Culture.’ Everyone there is tanned, wears dark sunglasses, looks like a movie star even when they’re not. – James Turrell
You can’t stop demographics. And show me a fence that ever worked. It didn’t work at Hadrian’s Wall. The Great Wall of China didn’t work. The Berlin Wall. – James Turrell
I come from a family that does not believe in art to this day. They think art is vanity. – James Turrell
Drake went through my exhibition. I did meet him in Los Angeles, and he was in the spaces that I did do there, and has some images from that. – James Turrell
I’m interested in light. It’s a very direct, pragmatic, American, rather naive approach. – James Turrell
In Arizona, we’re at 7,000 feet, so we’re above half of the world’s atmosphere. It’s crisp but hard, a side-raking light that can be revealing but doesn’t have the softness that maritime air has. – James Turrell
I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing. – James Turrell
I have made things for Calvin Klein and other designers, and it’s interesting to see the way each person approaches it. – James Turrell
We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create the reality. – James Turrell
I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way – I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that ‘we know not to be.’ – James Turrell
I feel that buildings often have a workaday aspect that you see during the daylight hours, and a more resplendent side that emerges after dark. – James Turrell
