trip report - James Turrell at LACMA

Julia Cameron, in the Artist's Way, encourages anyone aspiring to be an artist to go on field trips. A field trip could be to anywhere that features art, nature, or inspiration. Since we were heading west last week, we made several field trips. One was to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

There we experienced the James Turrell Retrospective. Notice I didn't say we saw it, we experienced it.  I wasn't very familiar with Terrell, having only seen some pictures of his Skyspace series. The pieces installed in LACMA weren't quite as big as the Skyspaces, but they were still inspiring and rich experiences. The rooms were immersions in light. Some were small, some holograms, some were total, as in floor and ceiling as well as walls.

I was bowled over by the expansiveness of Terrell's body of work. Here is a dedicated artist/architect/psychologist/physicist who dreams big (really BIG) and seeks to provide not static art, but a dynamic connection with his audience's perception of light.