Part two: Light and Space Comes to Port Townsend
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Port Townsend architect Richard Berg collaborated with Seattle architecture firm Olson Kundig to create plans for the Camas Meditation Hall. The hall will have two levels totalling over 7K square feet. While the outside presents as looking like concrete, it is actually wood. [/caption]
by Kathie Meyer
The idea of the beloved late Tom Jay — a bronze artist, poet, essayist, and salmon conservationist of wide repute himself — sharing a room in college with James Turrell as they were fresh on their path to the unknown makes a certain kind of crazy stardust interconnectedness sense.
The year was 1961, and the college was Pomona in Claremont, CA. The two of them only roomed together for their freshman year, but the stories they may have shared with each other must’ve been rich. Tom had already moved around a lot growing up with a father who worked for Standard Oil. James grew up in Pasadena, CA, in a conservative Quaker household, yet he had gained his pilot’s license at age 16. An aunt who lived in New York City opened up Turrell’s eyes culturally, and those experiences, coupled with thoughtful meditation as an aviator, informed his studies, first in perceptual psychology and then art. Jay dropped out after one year.
Later, Turrell would register as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and he flew Buddhist monks out of Chinese-controlled Tibet. Some say that might’ve been a CIA mission, but who really knows? It’s definitely part of his folklore.
In 1966, Turrell was arrested for coaching young men on draft avoidance, and the year he spent in jail interrupted his master’s studies. In 1973, he finally received his Master of Arts (MFA) degree from Claremont Graduate University.
In 1973, Jay settled in Chimacum. He’d gone back to school after an apprenticeship with Ed Dron of Ontario. Armed with an with an MFA from the University of Washington (UW), he started Riverdog Fine Arts Foundry where he casted work over the years for many notable Pacific Northwest sculptors including George Tsutakawa. He also started a foundry at Seattle University. He got married. They had a son.
Although Jay passed in 2019, his card is still in my Rolodex, and his widow, artist Sara Mall Johani, still answers the phone. She said there were not a lot of Turrell memories to speak of, however, Tom and she did attend the opening of “Light Reign” in Seattle, so of course they saw each other then.
Toward the end of the call though, Johani did say she vaguely remembered a story about Turrell coming up with a way to have the moon reflected in a potential paramour’s wine glass to impress her.
But, who knows, said Johani. It could be just folklore.
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“Witness,” a bronze sculpture by Tom Jay, greets patrons at the Jefferson County Library in Port Hadlock. [/caption]
Building codes and zoning laws
The thing that everyone agrees is not folklore is that Turrell absolutely requires precision. Installations using drywall must be constructed within 1/64th of an inch of the plan. Don’t leave ladders against it. Stuff like that.
Local architect Richard Berg was the initial architect for the meditation hall, however, Turrell felt more comfortable using Jim Olson of Olson Kundig in Seattle, the firm that worked on a skyspace in a private residence in Medina. Berg, however, knows the local building codes and zoning laws here just about better than anyone, so a collaboration made sense.
Berg’s been working on his own in Port Townsend for 27 years now. Even longer as an architect. He was a good choice to shepherd that aspect of the project through the hoops. His portfolio is impressive, as well as his education (UW and MIT), but this is the biggest name he’s worked with yet. Berg, then, must know the secret to how Turrell gets his skyspaces to seemingly float in air?
“Yes, I know how they get the floating look,” he smiled.
At first, Berg explained, the group wanted to use Building 409 on top of Fort Worden’s hill, but when it didn’t fly with state parks, the meditation folks needed another site. The change in plans allowed for imagining a space instead of adapting to one.
While the idea for the meditation hall was still in the early planning phases at the San Juan Avenue site, Camas Meditation Hall board member Walter Parsons came up with the idea for a Turrell skyspace. But, he said, as soon as he pitched the other board members, “it was their idea too.”
Around the same time, Tom Jay heard of the meditation group and offered to cast them a bell as a gift. When Jay began discussions with the Camas Hall board and heard of the skyspace, he casually mentioned his connection to Turrell. Therefore, it was pure synchronicity that brought the two noted artists back into each other’s orbit again, and honestly, if you research them in any depth, that seems to make more sense than two college kids who’ve kept in touch over the years.
When Tom passed in 2019, he’d brought the bell up to the point where it was ready to be cast. Finishing it was left up to Johani to arrange. It took three years, but finally, a foundry in Walla Walla completed the job. While it awaits installation outside the front door of the hall, it’s in board member Walter Parson’s backyard.
Jay’s last work
Parsons was also involved with the Henry piece as a fundraiser on the gallery’s board of directors, and he has known James Turrell ever since the 1970s. He worked with Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) when Turrell presented “Four Light Installations” in Seattle’s Pioneer Square in 1982. The key connection he has to Turrell is through Richard Andrews, past president of the Skyspace Foundation. Andrews was the Henry Gallery’s director during the skyspace’s installation there.
Parsons is now working with this board to raise the $5.4M needed to build the hall. They’re looking for a “lead donor,” which is key in fundraising to begin a capital campaign like that.
Groundbreaking won’t be this summer, then. There’s still a bit of work to do. “It won’t be as early this year as I had hoped,” said Bill Porter. Porter is also a board member and the world’s premier translator of ancient Chinese poetry. Like Turrell, he is a Guggenheim “fellow.” Turrell in 1974. Porter in 2011.
It took $1.5M to get through the design phase. “Right now, Turrell is finished. He’s done his work,” Porter said.
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Tom Jay's bell, likely his last work, is covered with Pacific Northwest nature icons. [/caption]
He sure did. At one point, Turrell signed papers from a hospital bed as he recovered from surgery.
“When he signed off on our project, he had 80 projects on the boards. I get the impression he’s a one-man show.”
As for Tom Jay, the bell is likely his last work, said Parsons. And although Turrell’s skyspace and Jay’s bell are not part of the public art collection, they will both be publically accessible, and definitely a couple of feathers in Port Townsend’s art cap.
All three of these artists are no strangers to public art either. Johani’s “Milestones” line Port Townsend’s F Street – part of the city’s official public art collection. Jay’s best-known local sculpture, “Witness,” stands sentinel outside of Jefferson County Library, but there are others if you know where to look. “Ravens,” 1979, part of the Washington State Art Collection, oversee the students at Chimacum High School like a blessing from above.
Raising funds, breaking ground, and building the hall will take another two years, they figure. Like a lot of us, Porter was likely feeling his mortality when he said, “I hope I live that long. It’s hard to be patient.”
Porter is being a bit dramatic because he’s off to Barcelona next week on his own to promote one of his books. He’s planning to live at least that long.
As time goes on and the building becomes reality, would Turrell ever pay Port Townsend a visit, as it is said he likes to inspect his work down to the last detail?
“We’ll definitely try to bring him here. It’s not unlikely,” he said.
Parsons demurred. “He’s pretty busy. Between Roden Crater and other projects.” He refers to Turrell’s life work, still unfinished, near Flagstaff, AZ. Parsons has not been to the crater, he said, but he’s been to a number of skyspaces throughout the world.
Having the skyspace here in our backyard in a meditation hall was perfect. “He’s a Quaker, so silence is part of his language,” said Parsons.
A silence only broken by the sound of a bell lifted by the wind skyward on a Camas prairie.
