Artist Richard Turner has created affluence of memorials during his career but none has been as claimed as this.
Turner’s “Air Becomes Breath” display at Santa Ana College’s Main Art Arcade ceremoniousness and remembers Sylvia Turner, the artist’s backward wife of 48 years. She died in May 2016, afterwards disturbing with pancreatic cancer.
Sylvia Turner was a longtime assistant and administrator at Santa Ana College (SAC). She served as the college’s administrator of able and assuming arts from 2008 to 2013. Before that, she served as SAC’s accessory administrator of able and assuming arts. An able able ballerina and choreographer, she additionally accomplished ball and chaired the ball department.
Sylvia Turner was accepted for her categorical aftertaste in accouterment and chichi adroitness of style. With advice from columnist Mike Farrel, one of Sylvia’s above students, Richard captured her best-remembered apparel and printed them in atramentous and white on identically-sized banners of silk.
The aftereffect is an display that’s both atramentous and celebratory.
Two admirers about-face and intermittently draft air against the cottony prints, breath activity and movement into the works, and giving added acceptation to the show’s title, “Air Becomes Breath.”
The display appellation additionally comes from the book “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi, which chronicles the neurosurgeon and writer’s attempt with date IV metastatic lung cancer.
“So abounding of us accept had adventures with the accouterment of our parents back they’ve died, the accouterment of a spouse,” Richard Turner, 74, said during a contempo account in the gallery. “So this acquaintance of what do you do with somebody’s accouterment afterwards they die is a appealing boundless experience, decidedly for bodies who are my age or alike younger.”
Photo by Stephanie Dodson
Richard and Sylvia Turner. His exhibition of prints of her accouterment ceremoniousness her and her adroitness of chichi style.
Richard and Sylvia Turner. His exhibition of prints of her accouterment ceremoniousness her and her adroitness of chichi style. (Photo by Stephanie Dodson)
Richard Turner, an Orange resident, is a assistant emeritus at Chapman University, area he accomplished abreast Asian art history and flat art for 41 years. He additionally served as co-director of Chapman’s Guggenheim Gallery.
“This is what I capital to do — allotment the acquaintance of Sylvia with accompany and our daughters,” he said. “I asked them to aces out the pieces of accouterment that best exemplified Sylvia’s adroitness of style.”
Out of 50 aboriginal images, Sylvia Turner’s friends, daughters and bedmate narrowed the selections bottomward to 14, which are on appearance in the college’s Main Art Arcade through Thursday.
The works accommodate images of academic accoutrements and accidental outfits, including mother-of-the-bride dresses from Sylvia Turner’s two daughters’ weddings, dresses she wore to assignment at Santa Ana College, and an accouterments she took while traveling away with Richard.
A simple, austere agreement by Philip Glass plays in the arcade on bend during operating hours. The arcade walls are corrective black, allegory artlessly with the white cottony banners.
“It’s my achievement that this allotment is universal,” Richard Turner said. “I achievement it’s attainable abundant that bodies who apperceive annihilation about Sylvia, annihilation about myself, our marriage, our children, could attending at this and participate in their own way in the afflicted or aching process, whether it’s article beginning in their minds or article that happened a continued time ago.”
Richard Turner is no drifter to canonizing art.
His aboriginal commemorative piece, “The Book of the Disappeared,” which accustomed victims of the Cambodian genocide and the “disappeared” of Argentina, was installed in the SAC art arcade in 1984.
Other memorials by Richard Turner accept included “Reliquaries” (1986), “Memory’s Vault” (1988), “Anaheim Veterans Memorial” (1999), “See Angkor and Die” (2009) and “We Too Were Once Strangers” (2015), a Japanese American farmers canonizing in Santa Ana.
Richard Turner has crafted dozens of added accessible art projects as well.
Over the accomplished two months, Richard Turner’s latest display at Santa Ana College has agilely fatigued students, agents and adroitness who bethink the activating administrator and best of the arts, who served on the lath of Arts Orange County and several committees for bounded arts organizations, including South Coast Repertory, the Bowers Kidseum and the Orange County Academy of the Arts.
“This absolutely aloof hits home,” said Phillip Marquez, armchair of SAC’s art administration and arcade director. “I bethink some of these apparel that she’s worn. I feel about like it was all-important for it to be here, abnormally the aboriginal show, because Sylvia committed her career to the school. It’s actual important that we account her here.”
Richard Turner hopes to booty this appearance on the road, and allotment with others the acquaintance of life, loss, afflicted and acceptance.
“Some bodies say they feel her presence, and others say they feel her absence,” he said. “So I feel like it works. It does what it’s declared to do.”
What: “Air Becomes Breath”
When: Through Nov. 9; hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays
Where: Santa Ana College Main Art Gallery, Building C, 1530 W. 17th St., Santa Ana
Cost: Free
Information: (714) 564-5615 or appointment sac.edu/art
Richard Chang is a contributor to Times Community News.
