James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” at Rice University is the 73rd Skyspace the artist created, but the pavilion has a little-known predecessor that would have been the very first of Turrell’s signature series.
Turrell does not draw, paint or sculpt, at least, not in the traditional senses of the terms; he creates with light. As he has put it, “I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it…my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.” Using light, color theory, and the manipulation of space, Turrell often creates areas that inspire quiet meditation (rooted in his Quaker upbringing) and play tricks on our eyes.
