Devon Booker’s Art World Detour to James Turrell’s Roden Crater
For Devon Booker, the route from the NBA to one of contemporary art’s most elusive landmarks has become surprisingly familiar. The Phoenix Suns guard has now visited James Turrell’s Roden Crater three times, beginning in 2020, and the experience has left a clear mark on how he talks about art, attention, and presence.
Booker’s connection to the site is more than celebrity curiosity. Roden Crater, the dormant volcanic cone in Arizona that Turrell has spent more than 50 years transforming into a monumental work of light and space, has become a place Booker describes in almost spiritual terms. “My hair is sticking up on my arm just remembering every time I’ve been there,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you were going to a different dimension, but it’s like a portal that you’re walking toward and no matter how close you get—I want to say heaven’s on the other side—but it feels like you’re going somewhere.”
The two have also developed a friendship. Turrell, who has long drawn admirers from outside the art world, said meeting Booker was “quite a thrill” and praised him as “an amazing person.” He added, “These are people that are special and have been special to basketball, to Arizona and the community in Phoenix. He’s quite an amazing person.” Booker, in turn, has been talking about an upcoming visit with Steph Curry, who recently purchased a work by Turrell.
The relationship also extends into design. Booker created a basketball shoe for Nike that Turrell reportedly liked, a small but telling sign of how the artist’s influence can move beyond galleries and museums into sport, fashion, and product culture.
Booker’s teammate Ryan Dunn described him as someone with a sharply defined sense of self, from his clothes to his home to his art collection. “He wants to be Devin. He doesn’t want to be nobody else,” Dunn said. “From the way that he dresses to his house to his (art) collection, it’s something that’s unique and one of one.”
For Booker, the appeal of Turrell’s work is not only visual but psychological. He said places like Roden Crater help him stay grounded. “It just makes you super present,” he said. “Not many times you get to be where your two feet are at and not think about anything else that’s going on in the world.” In that sense, the story is less about a basketball star dabbling in art than about a collector’s instinct for works that reward patience, stillness, and repeated looking.
