mattress factory

james turrell is kind of the big hitter at the mattress factory. you should wikipedia him to learn more about him, because i'm not going to try to explain or act like i know more than i do. all i know is that he designs some quaker meeting rooms, he built this huge observatory type cool thing into a crater in arizona, and his main focus/medium is "light"... you have to see it in real life. pictures make no sense.

"pleiades" is a dark room that you sit in. i can't tell you more than that. because then it would be pointless. i've been really thinking about light and dark, the metaphors, the ways that light and dark are valuable parts of our spiritual lives, our growth, our development. sitting in this room made all of those things come together and make sense in a really whole way. as if everything i've been living, feeling, seeing over the past 5 months made sense in a piece of art. it's about light. and how it's constant. even in the darkness. the source is constant.

the thing i loved about this particular trip to the mattress factory is the way that people reacted. i can't explain it any more than pittsburghers, i mean, like, yinzers, in the mattress factory. nothing has made me so happy, so excited in a long time. especially when it comes to art and its role in a community, its role in the world. modern art (and a lot of "art") can sort of get this reputation for being confusing, full of itself, too good for the average person, sort of thing. watching this wonderfully awkward, happy, funny family walk through the museum was such a joy. i love when the two worlds collide and realize they are one. i think they were really brave to venturing to the mattress factory. sometimes i'm scared to go to things like that, fearing that i won't "fit in" - and they weren't. they were loud, maybe obnoxious, but laurie and i were just tasteless. pictures, posing, enjoying, laughing and running away when we realized people were watching.

"My works don't illustrate scientific principle, but I want them to express a certain consciousness, a certain knowing. My spaces must be sensitive to events outside themselves. They must bring external events into themselves. I think of my works as being important in terms of what they have to do with us and our relationship to the universe, but not necessarily in scientific terms. I'm concerned with what my spaces direct their seeing to, and hence what they direct our seeing to. At the same time, I'm interested in the expression of time. Because, eventhough you may have expressions of our particular historical moment in, say, the art of Andy Warhol, there are also expressions that go through time, beyond time, and have a sense of themselves that transcends anyspecific period. That's the part of art I'm interested in. This said, however, I do want to be involved with the here and now. I want my art to function in contemporary terms..."-james turrell