Witness The Summer Solstice Through Utah's Sun Tunnels
One Of Land Artist Nancy Holt's More Famous Works, The Sun Tunnels, Is A Marvel To See Up Close & Personal During Regular Celestial Events
The desert is a special place. Many people write and talk about it. One of the grandfathers of the western genre, Louis L'Amour, devoted a whole book to it. In “The Lonesome Gods” he writes, "And we white men in striving for our success, in seeking to build a new world from what lies around us, sometimes forget that there are other ways, sometimes forget the Lonesome Gods of the far places, the gods who live on the empty sea, who dance with the dust devils and who wait quietly in the shadows under the cliffs where ancient men once marked their passing with hands.” This encapsulates a spirit of the desert, a place lonely, but where time seems to go forwards and backwards forever like the sky.
It is only natural that the desert would inspire artists. Given its vivid colors and picturesque scenery…not to mention the space. One such artist, Nancy Holt, did work all over the world, but eventually settled in the West, to be inspired by all it has to offer. She was a land artist, someone who takes the natural environment and integrates her art into it through some major installations. One of her most famous is in Utah. The Sun Tunnels have been a quiet marvel to visitors ever since they were installed in 1973. “It's far, about 4 hours from Salt Lake City, but that's kind of the point,” Holt says. For those who visit, they say it is an awesome, almost spiritual, experience.
When Holt first visited the desert, she didn't sleep for four days. She was so overwhelmed with the vastness of the land. Later, she would start to plan her Sun Tunnels project. She looked for land all over the deserts of the west, eventually settling in the Great Basin Desert. Holt came up with the idea right before her husband, a famous artist named Robert son, died in a plane crash. She bought 40 acres for $40 per acre in 1974 and started to realize her vision. Holt said about her land, "I had the sense that I was perhaps walking on a piece of land that nobody had ever walked on before - the natives who lived there hundreds of years ago, I'm sure they didn't step on every piece of my 40 acres - and that was thrilling to me."
The Sun Tunnels themselves are four large concrete tubes. They are aligned in a very specific way to align to celestial events. On the winter and summer solstices, the sun is centered in each axis during sunrise and sunset. Naturally, this inspires a pilgrimage of sorts during these events, but really anytime is a special time to see them. On each of the tunnels, there are holes drilled to project four specific constellations: Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. She worked with more than 40 people to make the tunnels. People to help build the tunnels like construction workers, people to move the tunnels like a crane operator and helicopter pilot, and people to help her align the tunnels and make the constellations accurate to the magnitude of the stars like astrophysicists and engineers.
An interesting aspect about Holt is that she was years ahead of her time in terms of environmentalism. Her work, not only Sun Tunnels but things like Dark Star Park were made with extreme conscious effort to integrate with the environmental landscape. This was at a time when land artists would actively destroy aspects of the environment in the name of art. It makes sense, though, with the influence the environmental landscapes had on Holt that she would want to preserve them for others to appreciate. In fact, pieces like Sun Tunnels, actively try to harness that energy and allow people to have an appreciation for it.
The Telegraph, a newspaper in England, had the opportunity to interview Holt about the Sun Tunnels before she passed in 2014. When the tunnels were first built, Holt slept in a VW camper van for a few days out there to record the light when it hit inside the tunnels. “One time I stayed about five or six days straight in the van,” she says. “I would watch sunrises and sunsets and the stars at night, which were incredible – you could get lost in them. When you’re alone in the desert, you’re ageless…timeless. You start to lose a sense of being contained in your body. It can be scary – where do I begin and end? You expand to fill the universe.” Holt found herself saying certain words out loud over and over, just to know that she was in the present. She became very aware that Sun Tunnels were a way of bringing the universe back to human scale. “It was a way of framing the landscape, and orienting one in space and time – of differentiating something vast and undifferentiated.”
Andrew Malo
A graduate of Northeastern Illinois University in Education, Andrew has taught for the past decade in Chicago, New Mexico, and Japan. He enjoys tinkering with trucks and motorcycles, woodworking, reading and computer programming.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Salt Lake City KOA, whose friendly, knowledgeable staff can book you on a city tour or a free shuttle to see Temple Square. Camping downtown provides you with a list of endless attractions. The state park behind the KOA has miles of riverside trails for biking/walking.