INAUGURAL ARTIST IN RESIDENCE · 2024
Bellefontaine
Love, legacy, and renewal.
During his 2024 residency at Bellefontaine Cemetery & Arboretum, Turnell explored love and the threshold between the material and spiritual worlds. Historic architecture, winding roads, mature trees, flowers, and personal acts of remembrance became the material of a photographic mosaic series.
A living archive
Bellefontaine became a collaborator in the work. Architecture held traces of many traditions; seasonal growth continually changed the view. In the Garden of Angels, small objects left in remembrance revealed how an intimate gesture can carry great emotional weight. These encounters brought memory, nature, and human care into the same field.
The resulting works approach the cemetery as a place where care continues to create meaning. Flowers become color and memory; monuments become human presence. History provides roots, while the landscape carries the possibility of renewal.
The promise of tomorrow
See Beauty Everywhere took on a different depth at Bellefontaine. Beauty existed alongside grief, age, and loss, through the attention given to what remains. The work proposes memory, nature, and human care as material for a more thoughtful future.