Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels
American artist, Nancy Holt began her artistic career in photography and video after graduating from Tufts University with a degree in biology. Holt is primarily associated with land art, although she was also involved with other mediums consisting of film, photography, sculpture, as well as publishing various books. In 1963, three years after graduating, Holt married an earth art pioneer by the name of Robert Smithson. Together they composed a collaborative film titled Swamp in 1969. It is said that photography and camera optics widely influenced Holt’s later environmental works which include but are not limited to Sun Tunnels (1976), Astral Grating (1987), and Up and Under (1998). Holt had a great fascination with space, time and connecting humanity to the earth which she shows in many of works, most specifically in Sun Tunnels. Located on 40 acres of land in the Great Basin Desert lays one of Holt’s most famous works, an 88-ton installation titled Sun Tunnels. These tunnels consist of four massive concrete culverts, each 18-foot long by nine foot in diameter. The grey concrete cylinders are laid out in an open X formation, making it possible to view the summer and winter solstices.
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This installation was site-specific and was constructed in a precise alignment. Up and Under is made up of four interconnected tunnels that snake through the earth. All four tunnels are aligned according to the North Star. When visitors stand in the middle mound, all four tunnels align while the tunnel above directs their view to the sky. Up and Under was developed out of Holt’s interest in sight and vision. Small amounts of soil and earth were collected from towns all over Finland and were mixed together directly beneath the tunnels. This gave a conceptual aspect to the installation and grounded the sculpture in its location. This particular installation resides in Finland and took nearly a decade to
This installation was site-specific and was constructed in a precise alignment. Up and Under is made up of four interconnected tunnels that snake through the earth. All four tunnels are aligned according to the North Star. When visitors stand in the middle mound, all four tunnels align while the tunnel above directs their view to the sky. Up and Under was developed out of Holt’s interest in sight and vision. Small amounts of soil and earth were collected from towns all over Finland and were mixed together directly beneath the tunnels. This gave a conceptual aspect to the installation and grounded the sculpture in its location. This particular installation resides in Finland and took nearly a decade to