Jencks

Jencks' landform at
Edinburgh's National Gallery of Modern Art

Fantasy Bob had admired for some time the work of landscape artist Charles Jencks.  His is the swirl of grass and ponds in the grounds of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh which fascinates kids and adults alike.

He noticed with some interest the latest work of Jencks - called Northumberlandia - The Lady of the North -  in which the site of an open cast coal mine in Shotton has been  modelled into a reclining naked lady.  She is 400 metres long and at her highest point is 34 metres high.  To model the figure it was necessary to move 1.5 million tonnes of rock, stone and soil.  A series of paths at different levels allow visitors a series of different routes through the site with many different vistas.

Northumberlandia

FB was inspired.  He had long noted the concern among the cognoscenti associated with go ahead Edinburgh cricket club Carlton that the vast expanse of Grange Loan needed some livening up.  For much of the year it lay empty and drab.  What was needed thought FB was some landscape art on the lines of The Lady of the North.   Excitedly he drew up the plans.

But his idea that flew so high crashed to the ground.  First the Doughty Groundsman expressed some reluctance to move the requisite amounts of material observing that his wheelbarrow only had limited capacity and an increasingly dicky wheel.  These problems were not insurmountable.  But it was Mrs FB who put the nail in the project's coffin when, in her usual succinct manner she advised FB 'You can forget any thought you had that I'm modelling for that.   No way.  Jose.  End.  Of.'

So Grange Loan will remain a green field of dreams and those who wish to see the work of Jencks can visit the Gallery or take the trip to Northumberland.