| | by admin | | posted on 14th October 2023 in Quakers in 100 Objects | | views 1804 | |
Live Oak Skyspace. created by the artist James Turrell, is in the meeting room at Live Oak Friends Meeting House, Houston, Texas. A section of roof opens up, thus letting natural outside light pour in and illuminate the meeting.
Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space who comes from a Quaker family. Before becoming a professional artist, he trained as a doctor and served in the Peace Corps. Turrell has created nearly 100 Skyspaces across the world and has become known as 'the architect of light'.
Turrell says of the Live Oak Skyspace:
“Well, for me that was kind of the meetinghouse I always wanted to see. I guess I like the literal quality or feeling or sensation, in that I want to feel light physically. We drink it as vitamin D; it's actually a food. We are heliotropic. And it has a big effect on the skin; it produces vitamin D. We also have a big psychological relation to light. All or most spiritual experiences, near-death experiences, are described with a vocabulary of light. So, for me, this quality to feel light exists, almost like we see it in a dream.”
How the Live Oak Skyspace makes the Quaker metaphor of Light tangible through architecture, silence, and a framed encounter with the sky.
Turrell’s Live Oak Skyspace makes the Quaker metaphor of Light tangible through architecture, silence, and a framed encounter with the sky.
Natural light becomes the central “presence” in the room – changing by the minute, altering perception, and drawing attention upward.
For Friends, Light is not only a metaphor but a way of speaking about divine presence that guides, reveals, and gathers. In that sense, the skyspace can be read as a physical analogue of a spiritual reality: it invites worshippers to encounter Light as something that is actively received, attended to, and allowed to do its work.
Quakers sometimes speak of “greeting the Light” — turning inward to what illuminates conscience, truth, and right action. Live Oak Skyspace makes that language feel literal without collapsing it into mere aesthetics. The opening in the roof frames the sky so the meeting does not simply sit in a room that happens to be lit, but in a room arranged around an encounter with Light.
This is not Light as decoration. It is Light asking: will you be present to what is given, and will you allow it to change you?
Friends have long spoken of the Inner Light as something that shines inwardly: revealing truth, exposing self-deception, convicting wrongdoing, and opening a way into integrity. The Skyspace does not replace that inward work, but it echoes it in the body.
You look up into a simple frame of sky. You notice shifts you would usually ignore. You become aware of time, atmosphere, and subtle change. In the same way, attending to the Light in Quaker Meetings often begins with noticing – and letting what you notice lead you into clarity.
Quaker Meetings are often silent, not to empty the mind, but to attend. The skyspace intensifies that ethos by making Light itself the main “event” in the room: the sky’s colour, the onset of dusk, the way brightness arrives and withdraws, the sense of scale opened by a view beyond the ceiling.
This can mirror a Quaker spiritual rhythm of sitting with darkness, waiting without forcing, and recognising illumination when it comes – sometimes gently, sometimes with a surprising clarity.
What makes Live Oak Skyspace feel distinctly Quaker is not only the emphasis on Light, but the simplicity and humility of the design. The space is restrained. The arrangement encourages communal presence rather than performance. The sky is framed without being owned.
In that sense, the skyspace resonates with Quaker testimonies — simplicity in form and equality in shared illuminated experience. The Light does not tell you what to think. It creates the conditions in which listening to the Light becomes possible.
Friends are like stained-glass windows — not because they dazzle on their own, but because they are transformed by the Light that passes through them. Stained glass looks dark and unremarkable from the outside; it only becomes luminous when light shines through it.
In the same way, Quakers do not claim to generate spiritual brilliance themselves. They speak instead of becoming transparent to the Light — allowing it to illuminate conscience, colour character, and shape action. Each pane differs in shade and texture, yet the Light is one.
When gathered together in a Quaker Meeting, the separate pieces form something larger.
A living mosaic of friendship.
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