Once Upon a Mattress…Turrell, History & the Artists of Tomorrow

Mattress Factory brochure for James Turrell: Into the Light

In celebration of several recent of James Turrell exhibitions, the Mattress Factory took you, dear blog reader, on a trip down memory lane.  Along the way, we reminisced about Turrell's first meeting with Co-Directors Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk in a New York City cab, peered through the lens of 1983 video camera to watch Turrell building artworks, delved deep into the scientific processes that contribute to experience of Pleiaedes, and rode along as Turrell, Barbara, and Michael rambled across the country in aU-haul with a broken-down Jaguar hitched to the back.  We saw how the trio's immediate chemistry launched a catalytic partnership resulting in new artworks, new collaborations, and the ultimate validation of the Mattress Factory's primary mission of supporting artists' creative processes above all else.

In the years following that fateful cab ride, Turrell accomplished a tremendous amount of work on Roden Crater and created artworks for museums and private collections across the world.  During those same years, the Mattress Factory launched numerous successful exhibitions highlighting artworks made by regional, national, and international artists.  As the Mattress Factory's 25th anniversary approached, it felt natural to reconnect with Turrell, to touch base, and to celebrate the milestone together.  This celebration took the form of a large-scale, yearlong exhibition of works titled James Turrell: Into the Light.

Dinner menu for Dust to Dawn, a 24-hour opening 

celebration for James Turrell: Into the Light

James Turrell: Into the Light, which opened in 2002, was the largest exhibition of Turrell artworks on the East Coast since the Whitney Museum show in 1980.  Combined with the three works in the permanent collection, the Mattress Factory presented twelve installations, models of Roden Crater, and a series of prints based on the light and space of Roden Crater.  Open for an entire year, the show provided an opportunity to familiarize patrons with Turrell's work and to build an extended dialogue around pieces then usually held in private collections or on view for a limited periods of time.  The museum opened the exhibit in grand style, with a 25-hour party.

Barbara and Michael selected Gasworks, an older example of Turrell’s Perceptual Cells series, in order to showcase a vast range of his work with light.  It was the first time the artwork had been exhibited east of the Mississippi.  A self-contained sphere into which a viewer is rolled, Gasworks presents neon lights timed to flash on the domed interior walls, creating an intense Ganzfeld, an experience of light as a homogenous visual field.

 

Gasworks as installed at the Mattress Factory.  Photo by Florian Holzer.

Gasworks is one of my personal favorite Turrell works, in part because we have so many cool tidbits relating to this work in the Mattress Factory Archives.  These materials speak to the sometimes arduous task of planning and executing projects intended to expand awareness of and appreciation for works of contemporary art. Here are a few examples of historical documentation of the James Turrell: Into the Light exhibit housed in the Mattress Factory Archives.

 

Domes for Gasworks arrived on a wide-load truck from Arizona and required a 10-man crew to carry into the lobby

Operating Instructions for James Turrell's Gasworks at the Mattress Factory

Extra, unused labels for Gasworks at the Mattress Factory

James Turrell with Gasworks on opening night of the exhibition

During the James Turrell: Into the Light exhibit, the museum presented numerous public events to facilitate discussion from a variety of viewpoints.  Speakers from many different backgrounds and with wide-ranging areas of expertise (including scientists, curators, artists, health professionals, Zen reverends, poets and archeoastonomists) shared their thoughts and engaged with audience members throughout the year-long exhibit.

 

Public Programs Brochure for James Turrell: Into the Light

Public events surrounding the exhibit brought the attention to the act of seeing

Many James Turrell: Into the Light public programs were free to the public

 ARTLab at the Mattress Factory

The Mattress Factory continues to engage audiences with the James Turrell works in the museum's permanent collection. ARTLab occurs every first and third Saturday and provides hands-on, interactive activities for all ages inspired by the works in our galleries. Much as our Mattress Factory artists have a chance to experiment with new materials and ideas in a space, we also want to give ARTLab visitors the experience of playing in a lab and exploring their creativity.

This past June, ARTLab participants sculpted with light by creating projection slides and played with the elusive material of light. Participants worked with color and perception as they created small slides that were projected onto the wall or into various spaces (much as Catso, Red is also a projection). James Turrell says that his work is "sculpting with light" and the ARTLab was an opportunity for visitors to play with this same idea.

Kids having fun creating light spaces with black light

An ARTLab artist with her creation

Another recent ARTLab inspired students to create collages and objects to be placed in a black-light booth. Inside the black-light booth, the collages and objects shine and glow in different, unexpected ways and the students experimented with their compositions to achieve a desired effect.  Works of art can take on a whole new character once placed in the light - and this project helped to deepen the students' understanding of the properties of light and how it can impact an experience with art.

As you can see, the history of collaboration, support, and inspiration between James Turrell and the Mattress Factory is carrying on to the artists and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.  Check the MF Website to see what the Education Department is planning next!

As much fun as it has been to dig back into the history of the collaborations between James Turrell and the Mattress Factory, there are so many other treasures and stories to tell that we'll shift gears in our next post.  Let us know if there is any artwork you're curious about and I'll see what we can dig up from the Archives.  Until then...

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS: PART III

In an earlier post, we talked about James Turrell's residency at the Mattress Factory and how it exemplifies the Mattress Factory's continuing and fundamental commitment to providing artists with the resources of space, time, and support without encumbrances or expectations of any sort.   Not only does this commitment remain today, some 35 years later, it stands as one of the museum's guiding principles and a hallmark of the mission of the museum.   When we look at the James Turrell artworks that developed in this unique environment and how those works advanced the entire spectrum of his works (pun, um, intended), we can't help but feel a little encouraged for our next 35 years! 

James Turrell, Danaë, 1983

Photograph by Florian Holzer

During his residency, Turrell slept at one of the Mattress Factory neighbor's house, shopped, cooked, and ate with Barbara and Michael, and spent hours drafting, building, revising, and adjusting to his satisfaction two artworks, Danaë and Pleiades.  While Danaë is a framed light piece similar to his earlier "Space Division Constructions"[1] works Acton, 1976 and Cumo, 1976, Pleiades marked a clear departure from his earlier work.  Pleiades was his first foray into a type of artwork referred to as "Dark  Spaces" or "Dark Places." Later "Dark Spaces" include Selene, 1984 at the Capp Street Project, Meso, 1986 at the Hirschorn Museum of Art in Washington, DC, Thought When Seen, 1988 at the Jean Bernier Gallery in Athens, Greece, and even portions worked into the construction of Roden Crater, 1976-.  These works, and others, all relate to the efforts and artistic developments that occurred while working on Pleiades at the Mattress Factory, way back in 1983.

Working Drawings for James Turrell's Pleiades, 1983

As anyone who has seen Pleiades, visitors to the artwork are guided by a handrail up a long ramp in a pitch-black hallway leading to a viewing platform where they gaze at a seemingly completely dark space.  Resisting the urge to click on one's phone for light, the viewer waits, maybe twenty, maybe thirty, or even forty minutes while the eyes adjust.  As Craig Adcock, scholar of 20th American art, describes Pleiades, "Gradually, dim areas of luminance seem to become perceptible and to move through the space, but these are often phosphenes generated by the random nerve firing inside our own retinas." Eventually a physiological adjustment called the Purkinje Shift occurs allowing the retina's cones and rods to perceive a blob of color first blue and then red, suspended in the darkness (we all paid attention in 9th Grade Biology, right?).  The viewer becomes aware of the ability to perceive color (cones do this) within the darkness (rods do this).  This process rewards the viewer with not only an artwork, but also the opportunity to observe our eyes in the process of perceiving. [2]  Adcock explains:

 ... [P]erception at these threshold levels is never really a matter of "seeing" so much as "sensing" the light's presence.  Such viewing is hard to describe.  The light is there and in no way indefinite.  Indeed, in some ways, it is more "definite" than the light of normal experience.  As it appears in the world, light lacks its own place; it is most often seen on something else as illumination.  In the subtle conditions of the Dark Pieces, light has ipseity.  It is itself, just as light, just as the basic stuff of perception, and in that unique place, it is extremely intense, despite the fact that it hardly exists at all."[3]

It is a truly fascinating piece.  Check out these handwritten notes about Danaë and Pleiades found in the Mattress Factory archives. 

Handwritten notes about Turrell artworks on Michael Olijnyk letterhead

The exhibition was such a success that the Mattress Factory and Turrell agreed to keep the works on view beyond the initial exhibition period and to come to an agreement on a purchase price.  By a stroke of serendipity, Turrell took an interest in a giant, 10-foot motorized band saw that Barbara had rescued from the trash heap at one of the local hospitals several years prior and offered to exchange Pleiades for it, along with her stash of aged black walnut.  Formally, the acquisition marked the start of one the nation's leading permanent collections of contemporary installation art.   It also prompted a decidedly informal cross-country road trip to transport the giant saw and the stash of walnut from Pittsburgh to Arizona during which Barbara, Michael, and Turrell forged what has come to be a long and lasting friendship.  We'll hear more about that road trip in our next installment.  Stay tuned!

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[1] Turrell, James et al., James Turrell: Light & Space, (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980) 35.

[2] Craig Adcock, James Turrell (Tallahasee: Florida State University Gallery and Museum, 1989) 53.

[3] Craig E. Adcock, James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990) 111.

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS: JAMES TURRELL

This is the first in a series of posts drawn from our archive. We are working on digitizing and integrating materials like artist records, photos, correspondence, video + audio files, notes and pieces of art into our website, and along the way our archivist Molly will be pulling out some extra-special items to share with us. First up is the ever-enchanting James Turrell, who was featured in the cover story of this week's The New York Times Magazine: 


Way back in the early 1980s, when the Pac-Man, Dallas, and astronaut Sally Ride absorbed the attention of the nation, the Mattress Factory was in its formative stage. Experimental theater companies performed on the first floor, a dance studio occupied the third floor, and the 500 Sampsonia Way building buzzed with sculptors, weavers, and photographers coming and going from the studios that occupied all six floors. In those days the museum, which had yet to dedicate itself completely to installation and performance work, rented its extra rooms to artists seeking studio space.

 Mattress Factory flier, circa 1980

Mattress Factory third floor dance studio, circa 1980

 

artist studio, Mattress Factory, circa 1980

I love thinking about the museum during this period and imagining how the principles that guide the Mattress Factory today were beginning to take root. When word began to circulate about an amazing exhibition being held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, founder and co-director Barbara and co-director Michael decided to call the artist up. Just like that. Recalling the episode in a 2002 interview Barbara states:

I think I made some smart remark like, "Well, now that you've had a show at the Whitney, you have to have a show at the Mattress Factory." He said, "Fine."

And so it happened that the nascent Mattress Factory museum brought James Turrell, one of contemporary art's leading stars and visionaries, to Pittsburgh. Looking back on that phone call now, it marks a significant turning point in the history of the museum--a moment when the ideas, energy, and entrepreneurial spirit coalesced to set in motion the creation of the museum we know today as the Mattress Factory.

James Turrell exhibition brochure, front cover

The three (Barbara, Michael and Turrell) met up on a street corner in New York City (vaguely recalled today as somewhere in Tribeca), piled into a cab, and made arrangements for Turrell to come to the Mattress Factory to make an artwork. It is likely that Turrell had no knowledge of the Mattress Factory when he agreed to the exhibit; there had only been three previous shows at that point and the artists were mostly from the Pittsburgh community. Asked later why he agreed so readily, he said that there was "just something there--a sense of trust about doing the show."

James Turrell exhibition brochure, 1983

In our next installment, we'll dig through some archival video of Turrell at the Mattress Factory, watch as the friendship between the museum and the artist takes root, and peer back into the Pittsburgh art scene of the time.

POSTED BY MOLLY Read All Posts by Molly