Born in Los Angeles and a resident of Arizona, James Turrell is a builder with light, a sculptor of large-scale installation, conceptual pieces that allow viewers to have interactive experiences with light.

One of his major pieces is at the site of the Roden Crater, an inactive volcano on land owned by Turrell near Flagstaff, Arizona. He is transforming the crater from the inside out into a light observatory.

Turrell attended Pomona College in California, majoring in psychology, art history, and mathematics and then graduated from the University of California in 1966 and from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. In 1998, he received the Arizona Governor's Artist Award.

Of Turrell's use of light, it was written: "he seeks not to enhance light, but simply to reveal its place in our singular lives, in the history of human kind stretching back to the first flame a human ever found, and then forward into the cascades of galaxies that suggest, in their distant shimmers, who we may someday become. For Turrell, 'there is truth in light." (Art & Auction)


Source:
Art in America
L.T.B.M., "What Interests Me is the Quality of Life Inhabiting a Space", Art & Auction, October 2006, Special Section