Artist Mary Temple was born in Arizona.
She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. — marytemple.com
James Turrell.
Meeting. 1986.
Courtesy of Moma/PS1, New York.
Many years ago a friend and I entered a room in an art museum. As we sat on a bench, the door closed behind us. The bench abutted a wall--the other walls had benches too, so we would have been facing people, if we hadn't been alone. I noticed that the sound in the small room was strange, somehow larger and more expansive than one would expect in such a close space. The strangest thing, though, was the color of the ceiling. It completely absorbed us. As a painter I couldn't imagine how the artist had achieved the exquisite effect. This was truly the most sublime hue I'd ever seen, I was enthralled and felt suddenly calm. We were perfectly quiet contemplating this apparition of color. It seemed like several minutes passed in this heightened sensory state, but it was probably only a few seconds. These few moments and what followed comprise the single most influential art experience of my life.
What happened next, was that suddenly a tiny dot appeared on the ceiling near the wall. The dot elongated and quickly morphed into the shape of a plane. In a microsecond the intense blue ceiling revealed itself to be sky. The tiny plane was just taking off from La Guardia airport. We could hear it now. It was sunset. We were facing east, sitting in a James Turrell skyspace. "Meeting" at PS1 in Queens irrevocably changed the way I perceive the world.
Mary Temple