Black hole, galaxies, the Sun and comets on
the one hand, and on the other - DNA, cellular structure, quarks, atoms and
particle collisions. Macrocosm and microcosm. Can they be art?
It always makes me amazed how the artist’s
concept can translate into art. In the case of Jencks, scientific theories are
translated into landscaping designs. DNA? Sure! Let’s put it in a herb garden.
Green walls, a nucleus and a double helix made of metal in the centre.
A black hole? Why not! Metal, plastic, turf
– there you go! It’s like something taken straight from a fairy tale.
Fractal Pond.
The Universe Cascade.
Symmetry Break Terrace.
Quark Walk.
At one point, while walking in the garden,
I started wondering what do woman’s buttocks do in this elegant and refined
company?
The artist was passionate about parks and
gardens. While the Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a private garden, open only
for one day every year, the Cravick Multiverse near Dumfries is a public park,
created in the areas destroyed by mining. The works there started in 2012, and
the park was finished in 2015, after just three years of work. I’m mentioning
this because our Silesia is in dire need of recultivation.
But, back to the park. in the very heart of
the establishment, the visitors can find an enormous emblem of the Sun,
Of course, I could not overlook the
Architecture of Hope – the idea he came up with together with his wife, and the
most human work of his. The idea came up when Maggie got cancer. The cold,
inhuman healthcare system often deprives the sick of hope, which is why, as a
response to the cold surroundings that Maggie was treated in, the couple
started their Architecture of Hope project, which the artist continued after
his wife's death in 1995 – until his death in 2019. The idea entailed cancer
care centres designed in the most human-centric way possible, with the best
possible care, so as to give patients and their families as much hope as
possible. Famous architects, including Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid were invited
to take part in the project. In total,
more than ten such centres were established. And while I have no doubt that
Jencks’ parks will survive like the Stonehenge, Maggie’s Centres are the most
significant and vibrant works of the architect at the moment.
By Russ Hamer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18235460
I’ll end by sharing some of my photos from my trip to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, just to encourage you a bit. The garden is open only for 5 hours every year, on a single day. But it’s so worth it!
https://gardenofcosmicspeculation.com
https://www.instagram.com/thegardenofcosmicspeculation/
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”
This poem, Auguries of Innocence by
William Blake seems to be the oft-quoted motto of Charles Jencks’ work as an
artist.
Charles Jencks, American architecture
theorist, whose textbooks I learned from during my time at the university,
boasted diverse interests in architecture and sculpture, genetics, randomness
theory, physics, fractal geometry, prehistoric artefacts, biology and
cosmology. What is more, he had a tendency to mix all of that with various
means of expression, such as steel, stone and earthen sculptures, mixed well
with the substance of parks and gardens, all to end up with a unique
interpretation of various scientific theories.
The story has it that it all started by
accident, when Jencks and his wife Maggie decided to build a garden pool for
their children. At some point, they realised that they didn’t know what to do
with the heaps of soil left after digging up the hole. My imagination tells me
that it went more or less like that: Maggie, an expert in Chinese gardens,
asked her husband to clean up the mess made when they built the pool and to
create a garden instead. And Charles was happy to oblige – but with his own
twist. Well, maybe not only his own, since he mentioned many times that they
came up with the idea for the garden together. And that’s how it started. First
garden, then second, then another one. Soon, it turned out that this “landart”
would become his magnum opus. Jencks’ gardens remind me very
much of the ones from Alice in Wonderland. That’s also how I felt in the
Garden of Cosmic Speculations in Portrack near Dumfries, stumbling upon
incredible surprises at every turn, just like Alice.
By Rosser1954 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42322079
surrounded by hundreds of stone comets. The
two hills represent galaxies – Andromeda and the Milky Way.
The whole piece resembles Stonehenge or
Brodgar, which the author often references.
By Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14078803
The beauty of this place lies in the fact
that you have to climb to the top of the mountain to see and understand the
concept, and that you have to walk around quite a bit – after all, it’s 25
acres.
Gazing into space ultimately led Charles
Jencks to CERN in Switzerland. Everybody knows that most people don’t
understand what scientists are saying, which is why he quickly became their
favourite artist and started working on the surroundings of the CERN dome
building. Unfortunately, this place was also destroyed by humans, who littered
it with car parks. The remainder was left to Jencks, who designed it after long
debates with scientists. From the conversations and discussions emerged the
concept of Ouroboros, a snake that swallows its own tail, which represents the
efforts to reconcile the theory of relativity with the quantum theory – since
no one knows which of these is superior and which one swallows the other one.
And thus, an Ouroboros was created around CERN.
As a woman, I can't forget the enormous
form-sculpture of a woman in Northumberland, supposedly the largest in the
world. This sculpture is a particularly great example of the way the architect
references archetypes, in this case the archetype of a Palaeolithic woman.
By User:MatthiasKabel - Praca własna, CC BY 2.5,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9444845
By Data: The OpenStreetMap communityMap: Smurrayinchester -
Openstreetmap, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50348088
It's
a shame I don't have a bird's-eye view photo available – but you can find it
online, if you want. It’s definitely worth it, since the concept is very
unusual. The sculpture is a park with kilometres of paths crossing an even
larger, 20-hectare park.
By AWhiteC - Own work, CC0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16178292
I’ll end by sharing some of my photos from my trip to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, just to encourage you a bit. The garden is open only for 5 hours every year, on a single day. But it’s so worth it!
A website hosted by John Jencks, who gave his permission to publish pictures from the private garden, is linked at the bottom of the post.
https://www.instagram.com/thegardenofcosmicspeculation/
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