Jul 20 2010
Cold Spaces :: Rothko Chapel & Tending, (Blue)
I can think of two spaces in Texas that put me at risk of hypothermia. Rothko Chapel in Houston, and Tending, (Blue) in Dallas.
I’ve visited both. I’ve sat silently inside their cold mouths and, in both spaces, felt a pang of gratitude for finally being spit out into warm air.
Rothko Chapel:

Tending, (Blue):

But these spaces aren’t cold in the same way that climate-controlled homes of suburbia are cold. In fact, Tending, (Blue) is open-aired. James Turrell, the artist, considered it a skyspace.
I walked through these frosty glass doors and down a purple-lit hall that funnelled me into an inner sanctum with canted stone walls making up the 4 sides of a square. The walls also served as a bench. I sat down and leaned back and looked up through a smaller square-cutout in the ceiling:
| 14 responses so far |

If you’re in the mood for a good laugh, try to remember your first job interview.
Although I wasn’t born in Houston, I did a lot of my growing up there. Briar Grove Park saw four, maybe five years of my life.



