1/18/01
'LAND ARTIST' TURRELL TO LECTURE AT AUBURN
AUBURN -- Artist James Turrell of Flagstaff, Ariz., best known for his nearly 30-year ongoing work with the Roden Crater in northern Arizona, will lecture at Auburn University on Monday (Jan. 22).
Turrell, who will discuss the fundamental relationships between earth, sky, light, space and time -- popularly as Land Art -- will speak at 4 p.m. in the AU Hotel and Dixon Conference Center auditorium.
The lecture is sponsored by AU's College of Architecture, Design and Construction, AU's School of Architecture, AU's Department of Art, the State Board for the Registration of Architects, and the Hertzfeld Lecture Series.
Roden Crater is a natural cinder volcano situated on the southwestern edge of the Painted Desert. Since 1972, Turrell has been working to transform the crater into a large-scale artwork that relates through the medium of light. His work has been supported with grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Dia Art Foundation.
Turrell begin his career in California in the early 1960s as one of the leaders of a new group of artists working with light and space. He was among a group of American artists who left the confines and conventions of urban museums and galleries for the expansive landscape of the American west. The focus of Land Art is to look to ancient traditions of art and architecture that engage the physical universe on its own natural scale.
Except for models, drawings and prints to relate to his larger works, most of Turrell's work is not an object of any kind. The artist provides plans for architectural constructions indoors and outdoors that are designed to capture and present light. The work is not the construction itself, but the experience of light and time that it provides.
Turrell's work has been recognized in exhibition in major museums around the word. In addition, several cities have commissioned permanent works.
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CONTACT: Barry Fleming in AU's Department of Art, 334/844-3399; or Rebecca O'Heal Dagg in AU's College of Architecture, Design and Construction, 334/844-5449.