Richard Soderberg

This photo is of a fenced path leading towards the river bike trail near EWEB. Some of the bike paths are longer than bus routes. In good weather with a well-kept bicycle I occasionally beat the bus to the downtown station using the roads and paths.

Two hours drive out of town is deep woods where seeing another car once in a day is unusual. It’s between many cities – Salem and Bend and Newport and Roseburg and Portland. There’s an airport that may still be international.

Flourishing downtown night life, little shops everywhere during the day. Good food to be found. Bike paths are crowded during the day and empty at night (aside from odd people and the occasional patrol car). University campus is laced with pedestrian and bicycle trails leading to everywhere; carry a pedestrian map.

Small (and not so small) co-ops are everywhere; they sell among other things energy-efficient light bulbs, bicycle repair, healthy foods, and internet.

Technology companies have been a driving force in the area for many years. Concentrated areas of town are saturated with Internet, with badly-wired residential areas beginning to harness wireless. The university contributes to IPv6 in various ways. Programmers, engineers, and system administrators are everywhere.

There is a James Turrell piece, titled Trace Elements: Light Into Space, in the Museum’s collection. While plans are not definite, we hope to put it back on view once the new Museum complex opens in fall 2006.

Seen at the Mattress Factory and 21st Century Museum of Modern Art.

Seen on Flickr. Described by Resnicow Schroeder:

A smaller entrance room attached at the side of the main structure opens into the garden. Ringing the interior space are smooth stone benches with angled backs allowing visitors to comfortably sit and concentrate on the view out of the 10×10 square foot opening in the ceiling.

In the dunes of The Hague, where light can have such a tangible presence, Turrell created a place to gaze at the sky: ‘Celestial Vault’ in Kijkduin. At the top of one of the rubble dunes, a bowl in the shape of an ellipse has been built, 30 meters wide and 40 meters long. A wall of earth, approximately 5 meters high encloses the bowl. In order to reach this artificial crater you first climb up the dune on wooden stairs and then walk through a six meter long concrete passageway. The slopes on the inside of the crater have been sown with grass and a monumental natural stone bench is in the middle on which two people can lie back and observe how the sky is a vault. A similar bench is located on a higher dune where a panorama unfolds over the sea, the beach and the flat countryside beyond. In the direction of the horizon, the vault gradually becomes flatter. Photo.

For the museum´s new tunnel, Turrell created a light installation. The work turns the walls of the tunnel into vessels for conducting light. The walk between the Beck and Law buildings becomes an exploration of color and space.

A skyspace, coined by Arizona artist James Turrell, is a simple elegant viewing chamber with
benches along its walls and an opening in the ceiling. Scottsdale’s Knight Rise has an elliptical
shaped oculus.

— Knight Rise Skyspace at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Live Oaks Skyspace has evening shows occasionally, shortly before sunset. Seen on Flickr.

A small installation of a permanent Skyspace at the Henry Art Gallery. Group meditiation occurs from time to time.

A fully enclosed cylinder buried beneath the sky. A beautiful statement about human visual perception, it can be chaotic or calm. It is one of several installations around the world.