The Painted Desert Bridge is designed to appear as a natural extension of the landscape. Turrell’s friends sometimes joke that’s also when he’ll finish the project. He has designed the tunnel, like other features of the crater, to be most precise in about 2,000 years. Because the universe is expanding, he must account for imperceptible changes in the geometry of the galaxy. To calculate the alignment, Turrell worked closely with astronomers and astrophysicists. The next occurrence will be in April 2025. The work is built to align most perfectly during the Major Lunar Standstill every 18.61 years. When the moon passes overhead, its light streams down the tunnel, refracting through a six-foot-diameter lens and projecting an image of the moon onto an eight-foot-high disk of white marble below. One of the tunnels that Turrell has completed is 854 feet long. ![]() Known as Roden Crater, it stands 580 feet tall and nearly two miles wide. Yet Turrell has rarely allowed anyone to visit the work in progress. He has spent 45 years designing a series of tunnels and chambers inside to capture celestial light. It is Turrell’s most ambitious project, but also his most personal. There is an 18,000-square-foot museum devoted exclusively to his work in the mountains of Argentina. The next year, he completed another on the Yucatán Peninsula. In 2010, Turrell built a pyramid surrounded by pools of moving water in Canberra, Australia. ![]() Visitors can view them in Tasmania, Israel, China, Japan, all across Europe, and in more than a dozen cities in the United States. He has produced nearly 100 Skyspaces alone. Turrell’s work can be found in 30 countries around the world. Turrell began working on Roden Crater in 1974. Tight contour lines near the center represent the steep slope to the summit. The sky above appears to flatten on the same plane as the rest of the ceiling, while supersaturated tones of light infuse the room below.Īt home near Flagstaff, Turrell views plans for the access road to the crater. In another series, “Skyspaces,” Turrell makes a hole in the roof of a building, then winnows the edges around the opening to a sharp point. To step inside is to feel as if you are falling through a radioactive cloud. One series that Turrell calls “Ganzfelds” fills the room with a neon haze. In others, a 14-foot wedge of green shimmers before your eyes. In some pieces, a ghostly cube will appear to hover in the middle distance. He will arrive at a museum with a construction crew, black out the exterior windows, and build a new structure inside-creating a labyrinth of halls and chambers, which he blasts with light in such a way that glowing shapes materialize. While most of his contemporaries work with paint, clay or stone, Turrell is a sculptor of light. Turrell, who turns 78 this year, has spent half a century challenging the conventions of art. “And now, I want to show you the Fumarole.” He tapped the gas and continued around the rim, with half the truck still dangling off the side. “Looking pretty good, isn’t it?” Turrell said. ![]() ![]() Contractors in hard hats and reflective vests streamed in and out of the opening. Halfway to the bottom, a dozen cars and trucks were parked on a narrow terrace, where a yellow backhoe was piling soil around the mouth of a tunnel. With the vehicle canted 30 degrees, I stared down the vertiginous slope. The right side of the truck slid off the summit while the left side remained on top. As we approached the far side, he said, “I’m going to drop over the edge,” and twisted the wheel sharply. Turrell paused to let the illusion sink in, then he restarted the engine and continued across the summit. You have to be between 500 and 600 feet above the terrain for it to happen.” This is an illusion that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry talked about. “But it can’t be,” Turrell said, “or we’d be surrounded by water. I followed his gaze, and it was true: The desert appeared to slope toward us from every direction, as if the volcano were sitting at the bottom of an immense bowl. “You see how the area right below us seems to be the lowest point?” he asked. The red-and-black volcanic cinder cone, located in Arizona’s Painted Desert, last erupted around 900 years ago. Moonrise and Earth’s shadow looking east from the crater’s rim. This article is a selection from the May issue of Smithsonian magazine Buy Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12
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