TAOS, New Mexico — “Have a good time,” Larry Bell tells me. He’s left me alone to look at one of his Light Knot works, a prismatic organic contortion made of thin sheets of polyester coated with aluminum and silicon monoxide. The piece is suspended from the ceiling and lit with a small projector. Air currents in the room cause it to rotate slowly, though the light appears to move incredibly fast across its surface.To my immediate left is a framed collage, which I learn later is made from flattened layers of the same material that he used for the Light Knot series. The room also contains bronze figurative sculptures, part of a series that grew out of a collaboration with architect Frank Gehry. I make my way to the main area of the large, two-story industrial warehouse space, where a selection of the glass cubes for which Bell is well known are installed. The artist has been making art for nearly seven decades and continues to be a major figure in the Light and Space movement, influencing and inspiring artists around the world. He explains that his creative process relies on improvisation, intuition, and trust, with his decisions guided by spontaneity. “Improbable” is his favorite condition with which to engage.In late September, Manhattan’s Madison Square Park Conservancy will unveil the commission Improvisations in the Park, Bell’s largest public art project to date, featuring six large-scale pieces. His work will also be on view this fall in solo shows at the Judd Foundation in New York City, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In light of these exhibitions, Bell welcomed me to one of his two studios in Taos, New Mexico, where I had a good time looking around. Our conversation, below, has been edited for length and clarity.Installation view of Larry Bell’s “Double Wall with Triangles SS (Zinc/Sand/Spa/Capri)” (2024), laminated glass coated with silicon monoxide and quartz (courtesy the artist and Richard Levy Gallery)Hyperallergic: This is the first time I’ve seen so many of your iconic glass cubes installed in one place. How do you even begin to talk about your lifetime of work? Larry Bell: All of my work has something to do with right angles. I suspect that comes from the tyranny of our environment. I defy you to count the number of right angles that impinge on your peripheral vision in this space, or any other space. It’s a physical force that we all live with, and how it impacts us emotionally is different for everyone. I suspect that a lot of my reasoning for using corners comes from when I was a kid. I was deaf, and it wasn’t diagnosed, so I was often punished for not paying attention — and I had to stand in the corner. Growing up like that, I developed a fascination with being in the corner. Play the hand that works for you, and all that.H: Can you tell me more about your fascination with glass? Seems like it provides you with exponential opportunities.LB: Well, that’s true. When I got out of art school, I got a job in a picture-framing shop in Los Angeles. One of the things I had to learn was how to cut glass to fit the picture frames. I was about 18 or 19 years old. It was the first time I learned how to do something that would be applicable to something else. And so I found out that’s how glass is cut. You score the surface and then use pressure to break it. The surface was also very interesting to me. Glass reflects light, it transmits light, and it absorbs light, all at the same time.All of that made glass an improbable and mysterious medium for me to play with. At the time, I decided I was going into the studio and was going to be an artist. I wanted to find something that made my activities unique. At that moment the serious movements in art were based on Abstract Expressionism — people like de Kooning and Rothko. I loved their work, but I didn’t see any point in trying to do a better painting than de Kooning could do. And so I started pursuing the functioning of glass. It was an endlessly curious kind of motivation.Larry Bell, “coated ss” (2021), Kelp and Limoncello laminated glass coated with Stainless Steel and Tio2 Peacock laminated glass coated with inconel (photo Nancy Zastudil/Hyperallergic)H: When you think about those early days of learning about and working with glass, did you have any idea that you were going to be one of the main artists involved in what would be dubbed the Light and Space art movement?LB: No. I felt I had to follow a certain kind of discipline similar to the discipline of my mentors — the other artists I was hanging around with. I only hoped to be part of something important. But just being able to get out of bed and go do something different than anybody else was doing was important. So I counted on myself to produce things that I hadn’t seen before. Everybody I was close to had an extraordinary sense of humor; the improbability of the rigor and the humor was very addictive. I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to copy anybody. That was part of the ground rules of the relationships: nobody could copy anybody else. They had to be motivated by their own aesthetic. And it had to constantly change.H: What was the response from people seeing your work in those early exhibitions, whether at Ferus Gallery or others?LB: The only people I really cared about were my mentors [Ken Price, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin]. If they said I was a flake, it would have been devastating. But they never did. They were always very supportive. And I tried to be supportive of them too, because I counted so much on the camaraderie. I don’t know if they felt the same way as I did about things, but there was a tremendous amount of respect that we gave to each other. It was a gift. Installation view of Larry Bell’s studio, 2025, Taos, New Mexico (photo Nancy Zastudil/Hyperallergic)H: Do you feel like you’re able to be a mentor now to some younger artists?LB: I don’t want to be a mentor. I just want to do my thing. I’ve never been interested in groupies, you know? And if things I was doing manifested the group in the first place, there’s nothing I could do about it.H: Let’s talk about your work in Madison Square Park. How did you embark on creating a public art installation on such a large scale?LB: I’m thankful for the opportunity to do something like this. I’ve never done a show like it. The engineers have to make sure that the plinths are plumb and flat and strong. I have no doubts that they will do their best to make a good presentation. But I believe the saying is, “Shit happens.” You never know what to expect. Danger lurks everywhere.H: What do you think that material is going to do with the light in Madison Square Park? LB: It will reflect the light. It will transmit the light. And it’ll absorb the light. That’s what glass does.Larry Bell, “Solar Study 88” (2024), mixed media with aluminum and silicon monoxide mounted on canvas (courtesy Larry Bell Studio)H: (Laughs) Yes, I guess that’s true. Concerning color, are you working with the colors of the light spectrum as it interacts with the glass or is it pigmented film on glass? LB: Every piece of glass in this room has a coating on it that we have applied to the surface of the glass. In some cases, just the inside of the cube. In other cases, just the outside of the cube. Or both inside and outside.The color on these here is a film put between two pieces of clear glass. The gradient is a metal film. And then on top of that is a quartz film that interferes with the light that’s reflected off of the gradient. It’s the same phenomenon as when you go to a filling station and see a puddle of water with rainbow colors on it — that’s the gasoline. The varying thickness of the gasoline interferes with light at different wavelengths. The thickness of the glass is what makes the color, not any pigment in the glass. So usually this is just light trapped at those wavelengths at those thicknesses.The pieces in Madison Square Park are not coated. It’s laminated glass that is fabricated for me by a company on the West Coast. The glass itself is clear. The film that holds two pieces of glass together has the color in it. When I’m working on that kind of sculpture, there’s very little hands on other than the assembly of the things. I tell the glass company how big the parts should be, how thick they should be, and how much they should weigh.Installation view of maquettes in Larry Bell’s studio, 2025, Taos, New Mexico (photo Nancy Zastudil/Hyperallergic)H: I have to ask: Do you have a favorite color?LB: No, but I have a favorite feeling, and I don’t know that I can describe it. I have a feeling of success in what I’ve attempted to do. It provides a certain kind of epiphany that can translate into the next step. It’s the lesson that was given to me by the work itself. I think of art not as an object, but as a teacher. And my work is my teacher. It’s been that way all my life and it was those guys that I hung out with and those early years — they were the people I learned from, and their work was their teacher. H: What can you say about the new two-dimensional collage works in Irresponsible Iridescence at the Judd Foundation? What prompted you to start working with collage?LB: Everything is an experiment — everything — so the collages are just more experimentation, and they are interesting to look at. And after I’ve experimented, I may or may not have art, but I definitely have evidence of my investigations. It’s honest evidence of what’s worthwhile.There’s a lot of different material in the collages, such as canvas that’s been gessoed, and laminated film that’s been metallized with silicon monoxide. So the colors are actually light that is being reflected back at wavelengths equivalent to the thickness of the deposit. The texture started to intrigue me because I did not know how I did it. I knew what I put down and laminated together to make up the imagery, but not the surface. I was chasing the surface, trying to figure out why it did what it did. I haven’t figured it out yet. When we put one next to the other, there seems to be a narrative. There’s some kind of story that they’re telling.Installation view of Larry Bell’s studio, 2025, Taos, New Mexico (photo Nancy Zastudil/Hyperallergic)The metals I use evaporate — they get so hot that they turn into a liquid, and then so hot that they can no longer stay a liquid. They have to evaporate, and that’s what coats the surface. It’s the electrons in the heat that drive the molecules until they collide with another surface. The nature of this way of working is that as the molecules are liberated from their source and travel the distance between the source of the heat and the surface that stops them. They have a certain crystalline structure, which gives them their optical characteristics. H: Do you ever get tired of telling people about your process and techniques?LB: Well, I’m not tired of talking to you.H: (Laughs) Oh, good, I’m glad! I’ve come across other interviews in which you reference the importance of trusting yourself. Do you still feel that way?LB: Absolutely. I’ve been in the studio for 66 years, just about every day of my life. The performance of the materials that I work with engages my curiosity in such a way that I keep wanting to do more. I’m addicted to it, and I wonder how to maintain that addiction.