An Artist’s Moment

If you ask an architect who their favorite living artists are, high on the list will often be James Turrell. He creates Skyspaces, rooms with an aperture through which you can see only the sky. By reframing something so familiar, he gets the viewer to see light and its effects in a different way. In March 2025, he was listed as #49 on the Art Mag list of the top 100 living artists. He has been one of my personal favorites for a long time. On the first page of my sketchbook, I have written this quote by him: “The best magic of all is the magic that is real. I am interested in working directly with that power.” That quote sums up the convergence of two of my deepest interests – architecture and spirituality – both of which I approach with an edge of innovation.

Last year, I did my Sanctuary project for its fourth iteration prompted by a great opportunity to have it filmed and featured in a documentary (not yet released.) After a great experience of creating and presenting the work, I submitted it to an awards program nearly as an afterthought, and was delighted months later to learn I had won a design award that would be presented at the AIA National Convention in Boston.

In June, I went to the awards ceremony in Boston. When the first award was given to Santiago Calatrava, my architect friend and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. He is a very famous Spanish Architect who has won the Pritzker Prize. It set the tone of high quality work being honored.

Toward the end of the night, in the Religious Art section, they gave an award to James Turrell and a collaborating architect (Perkins Eastman). I wasn’t sure at first how involved Turrell was in the project, but as the architect talked, it became clear that this was a genuine James Turrell Skyspace, implemented to benefit a Quaker youth seminary in New York. Turrell, also a Quaker, had directed it himself and had been involved in every detail, with the architect executing his vision.

So it was quite a moment for me when the next name called was my own. To have my work presented in the same category, and nearly in the same breath, as one of my artistic idols was pretty disarming. In recounting this, I do not mean to equate myself with him. He is at the end of a long career that has left a mark on the history of art. His Roden Crater, when complete, is likely to leave a legacy long after his death, maybe for centuries. Yet that imbalance is also why, for me, it felt so transcendent for my images to come up on the screen right after his, and to step on the stage and try to say something intelligent. It was an honor just to have my work recognized at a national level – and a big boost for my young firm -  so to layer onto that being presented in nearly the same breath as a legend like James Turrell – made it that much more surreal for me.

- Doug Staker, Principal Architect at Squaremoon Studio -