The Multiverse and Galaxies at the Crawick Multiverse

''Crawick Multiverse'' is a

land art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mo ...

project by the landscape architect and designer

Charles Jencks Charles Alexander Jencks (June 21, 1939 – October 13, 2019) was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous i ...

near

Sanquhar Sanquhar (, ) is a town on the River Nith in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, north of Thornhill and west of Moffat. It is a former Royal Burgh. It is notable for its tiny post office, established in 1712 and considered the oldest working p ...

Dumfries and Galloway Dumfries and Galloway (; ) is one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, located in the western part of the Southern Uplands. It is bordered by East Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, and South Lanarkshire to the north; Scottish Borders to the no ...

. It opened to the public on 21 June 2015. The project is located on the site of a former open cast coal mine and covers approximately 55 acres, making it the largest of Jencks's works in Britain. Nine 'landforms' make up the ''Crawick Multiverse''. Like Jencks's other work, including the nearby ''

Garden of Cosmic Speculation A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...

'', these represent ideas from modern cosmology. Unlike the ''Garden of Cosmic Speculation'', the ''Crawick Multiverse'' landforms use stone, in the style of the

megalithic A megalith is a large Rock (geology), stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. More than 35,000 megalithic structures have been identified across Europe, ranging ...

monuments. These include the 'North-South Line', a 400 meter long stone avenue flanked by over 300 boulders, and two

stone circles A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being bu ...

on top of mounds representing the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

and Andromeda galaxies. In total, over 2000 boulders have been used in the project. Jencks has described it as "A cosmic landscape worthy of the ancients."

References

External links

The statue got me high
A critical reflection on the ''Crawick Multiverse'' by The Urban Prehistorian
Video and commentary on the ''Crawick Multiverse''Video and commentary on the associated bings at Gateside
{{coord, 55.382, -3.9323, region:GB, display=title Gardens in Dumfries and Galloway Sculpture gardens, trails and parks in the United Kingdom Land art Sanquhar 2015 establishments in Scotland

See also

References

External links