By: Judy Conrad
Posted: September 10, 2025
If you ever have the chance, go to any installation by artist James Turrell (1) - the man is a genius! He has a permanent installation, Knight Rise at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and another, Air Apparent, on the main campus at ASU.
Turrell specializes in light installations and our perspectives—your perspectives. He wants to mess with your mind, open it, and allow you to really see. Do read about him more below (2) and follow the link to his Magnum Opus, The Roden Crater! (3)
Photo - James Turrell’s local installation: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Photo - James Turrell’s local installation: ASU Main Campus
Roden Crater, near Flagstaff, Arizona, is a modern-day Stonehenge, yes, but it is so much more. It is an extinct cinder cone volcano that James Turrell purchased with money he received as a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. “Since then he has spent decades moving tons of dirt and building tunnels and apertures to turn this crater into a massive naked-eye observatory for experiencing celestial phenomena.”(4).
Photo - Roden Crater
In June, 1987, I read a small article in The Arizona Republic titled, “Students to help artist reshape Roden Crater”. For $90.00 I could be a Rio Salado Community College student and spend two weeks working on the Roden Crater.
I already was a fan of Turrell's. I had driven to Los Angeles two years earlier to attend his light installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and more recently, I had gone to hear him speak about the Roden Crater project at the U of A in Tucson. I could not miss this opportunity to take part in the formation of one of the most ambitious art projects in history. It might be an infinitesimal part, but it was a part.
From Judy's journal (bolded):
“Wednesday, July 15, 1987. I, who am not into camping or hard physical labor or wielding a shovel for hours under the hot sun; I, who have dealt all my life with severe asthma-whose lungs protest mightily when required to make steep ascents (up craters, for example). But, here I am Judy Conrad, probably the oldest person here—undoubtedly the oldest person here!” (I was 48).
We “students” set up tents at a campsite halfway up the side of the crater. There were about 15 of us. The number vacillated quite a bit over the two weeks because we were a varied crew. Some were sophisticated art students from London and New York, some were Turrell fans like me, and most were actually Rio Salado students.
“Our campsite is set on a plateau of the crater overlooking the desert landscape below. There was a gale-force wind whistling around us as we tried putting up our tents. About eight pm, after I had used every ounce of strength pounding the tent stakes into the sandy ground, a sudden, huge gust of wind lifted my entire tent and very nearly blew it right over the cliff. Several of the guys caught it, including Turrell. Then a brand-new friend, Harry, found a huge 10 foot railroad tie and threw it into my tent, thereby giving me great peace of mind. It easily weighed 200 pounds. Still, that was my bleakest night of the two weeks. I went right to bed to add more ballast to my tent, crowded next to my hulking piece of rough timber, and listened to the wind howl and beat at my tent all night. Didn't sleep much.”
Some of our group washed out the first week, because it was darned hard work! We had two crews of workers that traded days of duties. One day we would hike up to the top of the crater and shovel and hoe, smoothing off the crater to Turrell's specifications; the next we were taught to survey by Turrell himself.
“Friday, July 17. Sheila (art student), Harry (New York), Paul (London), Rich (student), and I were expected to start surveying this morning (6:00 AM) for one of the roads that will eventually wind around the crater. We learned how to place stakes, using hundredths of a foot as our guide. It is not easy to be that precise, especially with the wind howling around us as it usually is on this crater. We marked and tied the stake-finders and painted the stakes themselves yellow. We got a pretty good curvature of the road marked before it was time to stop. Then we had to trudge up the inside of the crater to its top and back down the outside to our campground, carrying all our surveying equipment. It was exhausting. My face was flushed red-hot and my leg muscles were trembling when we finally reached camp. But I did love surveying.”
Turrell was very hands-on during all this, and generous with his time. He gave opening remarks about his “dream” for the crater and laid out all the possibilities and concepts with great clarity so that we felt we shared that dream too. Tears filled my eyes on hearing him speak with such passion about creating a perception, an actual understanding, of “the music of the spheres”.
James Turrell was also extremely sensitive to the Native American culture of our surroundings. One day he brought Eugene Sekaquaptewa, a priest in the Hopi nation, to the campgrounds. We all went to the top of the crater (again that day) to hear him talk to us about the volcano, its surrounding lands, and what they meant to the Hopi Culture. It was very meaningful for everyone.
Photo - From Judy’s Scrapbook - Memories of Surveying the Roden Crater
“Monday, July 27. Walnut Canyon was our scheduled field trip for today, but it was raining so hard we decided we might as well wait it out at the trusty TwoBar Three Bar, a dark pool-hall cowboy bar really truly out in the middle of nowhere. (I would have no idea how to find that bar today.) We told Martine (the Rio Salado prof in charge of our motley group) that we didn't remember seeing these afternoon bar stops mentioned in her neatly-prepared syllabus.”
We were given weekends off, and our disparate group scattered to the winds. I lived in Phoenix so I just stayed in Flagstaff with friends and arrived back at the Skystone Foundation (Turrell's studio), as planned, on Sunday afternoons. From there we were driven back to the Roden Crater in vans. One of our two Sundays there I was the only arrival at the planned time. Jim Turrell came out, invited me to wait inside, and offered me a couple of books I might find interesting, then returned to his studio to work. After an hour with still no other arrivals, he came out, fixed us some herbal tea, and sat down to chat.
Turrell was a genuinely nice guy, and he spoke to me naturally and openly, but still...he's also a major intellect and a big name in contemporary art. I was intimidated. Luckily I could speak about my career as an orchestra musician, which interested him. We chatted for about 45 minutes before the others finally started drifting in. During that time I asked him to sign my Roden Crater book, which he graciously did. That one-on-one time was an unexpected event and a memorable occasion for me.
“Wednesday, July 29. Well, this is it—our last day! We break camp, and Sheila finds an entire family of scorpions underneath her tent! I know everyone is anxious to return to their homes, families, beds, refrigerators...but this has been a unique experience, and we all feel it. We take our final, zany photos, give hugs, and say our choked good-byes.”
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About the Author:
Judy Conrad, a longtime Phoenix resident, was a flutist/piccoloist with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra for almost 20 years. She then dedicated another 20 years as Artistic Director and flute faculty at Rosie’s House, https://rosieshouse.org/ a free music academy for children in Phoenix. The organization was founded on the belief that music education is a catalyst for changing a child's life, which she witnessed many times over in her years there.
About James Turrell:
- “James Turrell is an American artist best known for his pioneering work with light and space. Born in 1943 in Pasadena, CA, he creates installations that use light as a tangible medium, shaping perception and transforming architectural environments” Chat GPT
- He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2014 Turrell's ground-breaking art, which manipulates light and space in ways that force the viewer to question reality. Houston Chronicle, 2014
- Link to Roden Crater site: https://rodencrater.com/
- Wikipedia
Photo Credits:
- Public Art Archive - Knight Rise, James Turrell Installation, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
- Art News - Air Apparent, James Turrell Installation, ASU Main Campus, Tempe, AZ
- From Judy’s files
- Roden Crater Website, 2025 https://rodencrater.com/
