Happy Winter Solstice! Not only is today the shortest day of the year and the first official day of winter, it is a great opportunity for an art field trip to a Utah treasure.

The Sun Tunnels is a land artwork by Nancy Holt, completed in 1976, consisting of four large concrete tubes, laid out in an open X configuration in the Great Basin Desert in Lucin, Utah . The nine foot diameter, 18 foot long tunnels are pierced by holes of varying size, that correspond with the pattern of selected celestial constellations such as Draco, Perseus, Columba and Capricorn. Each tunnel reacts differently to the sun, aligned with the sunrise, sunset, or the summer or winter solstice.

“Solstice” is derived from the Latin phrase for “sun stands still.” This is because the sun’s arc, after growing shorter and lower since the summer solstice,  appears to stabilize, with the sun seeming to rise and set in the same two places for several days.  Holt took this into account when strategically placing the tunnels, so they would align with the rising and setting of the sun for both the winter and summer solstice.

Holt described the sun tunnels as ” an inversion of the sky/ground relationship-bringing the sky down to the earth.”

Photograph by Laurence Belingard, 1999

So pack a lunch and take a road trip today. If you can’t make it within the next couple days, make sure you see this fantastic work at some point – maybe plan ahead for the summer solstice.  To get there:  Get to Route 30 from either Interstate 84 (from Snowville, UT) or Route 223 (from Oasis, Nevada). Proceed on Route 30 to the Lucin cutoff (42 miles from Oasis, 83 miles from Snowville). Go south on the dirt road four miles to Lucin. Continue south from Lucin two and one half miles, then bear left, going east. You should be able to see the Sun Tunnels pretty soon. Go another two miles, bear right, and go one and one half mile to Sun Tunnels.

“It is a very desolate area, but it is totally accessible, and it can be easily visited, making Sun Tunnels more accessible really than art in museums . . . A work like Sun Tunnels is always accessible . . . Eventually, as many people will see Sun Tunnels as would see many works in a city-in a museum anyway.” -NH

Fun fact – especially for those that took our last suggested art field trip to the Spiral Jetty a couple months ago – the creator of the Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson, was the late husband of Nancy Holt. They shared a beautiful passion for environmental art, and made this art accessible for all to see.

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