Mark Feldtkeller’s public art piece “Look In Up” is scheduled to be dedicated at the roundabout of Back o’ Beyond Road, Indian Cliffs Road and State Route 179 on Monday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m.
Attendees for the event can meet at Sedona United Methodist Church, located at 110 Indian Cliffs Road before walking over.
This is the final work to be installed from the group of artists Susan Kliewer, Don Kennell, Lisa Adler and James Muir, all selected in 2022 by the Sedona Arts and Culture selection committee for placement in area roundabouts.
“I feel flattered, honored and humbled that I would be chosen to be a gateway piece like this,” Feldtkeller said. “I’ve put my heart and soul into it [and] it’s going to be pretty awe-inspiring.”
Cosmologically inspired, “Look in Up” is an installation composed of three approximately 9-foot travertine limestone columns with a central 5.5-foot-tall Shiva lingam topped with a crystal. The columns’ bases are carved with symbols from six ancient cultures and their tops crowned with hundreds of hand-shaped crystals arranged as night-sky constellations.
Feldtkeller leans against one of his sculptures at his Sedona home on Nov. 29. David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers
“‘Look In Up’ was created based on the fact our culture is consumed with technology. Early cultures looked to the heavens for connection,” the city of Sedona stated. “His piece is meant for us to look within ourselves and up at the constellations, which are carved in columns and displayed with colored crystal constellations. Ancient Egyptian and aborigine hieroglyphs, as well as Native American symbolism is carved into the columns, anchored by a sacred geometry base.”
The work is grounded in four other ancient cultures: Mayan, Nazca Line/Incan, Hopi and Sumerian and each column has carvings representing two cultures at their bases with significant symbols.
“The centerpiece will [have] … a crystal on top of it,” Feldtkeller said. “That crystal will ultimately, not this year, but hopefully summer of ’26 — have a core through the column to the northeast, east, east-northeast that will align with the summer solstice sunrise for about five minutes. Through that core, through that column, the sun will pierce into the crystal and bring it into a reflective glow.”
He was originally worried that he wouldn’t get the alignment right at Back o’ Beyond but “it will align at 6:10 a.m. on the 21st of June.”
After relocating to Arizona in 1984, Feldtkeller moved to Sedona in 1999 and raised four children. He began his career as a jeweler, specializing in diamond setting and fine carving, but transitioned into larger fabrication work and he began working extensively in stone after 2010, which eventually led to the large-scale sculptural work he creates today.
mark Feldtkeller created a maquette of his sculpture “Look In Up” at a city event in 2021. Photo courtesy of city of Sedona
His background in jewelry still appears throughout the piece. Each star and constellation in upper two-thirds of the columns required shaping and polishing individual crystals which are skills he gained from years of gem-setting.
“I worked a lot with diamond wheels and stone setting, so that was a pretty easy task for me,” Feldtkeller said. “They’re beautiful, they’re brilliant; they actually reflect a ton of light depending on the direction of the sun. They’re all shaded slightly — stars are not just one color. There’s amber, there’s rose, there’s blue, and there’s clear. So each of the constellations [and] I think there are a couple hundred stars total in the columns — has a slight tint of those four colors. Some of the constellations represent accurately to those colors” in “Look In Up.”
To support the bases and the geometry of the piece, Feldtkeller constructed a three-foot-tall terrace. The four cardinal directions are marked in redstone, which city staffers helped carve. The work is full of “cryptic” details and layered symbolism. He hopes someone might notice a constellation, a petroglyph or a Sumerian carving as a child and decades later see something entirely new in the same sculpture when they have children of their own.
“My inspiration was based in doing art that drew people to think and to do something that kind of opened up the span of the history of man,” Feldtkeller said. “People can look at things in the work, and maybe somebody’s driving by the roundabout with their grandson, and he notices the constellation Orion’s Belt or maybe the Sumerian carvings. But 50 years later, he’s driving with his own grandson and he will see something totally different, the work is kind of designed to kind of evolve.”
Correction: The story initially stated the roundabout was at “Back o’ Beyond Road, Indian Cliffs Road and State Route 89A,” when it should have read “Back o’ Beyond Road, Indian Cliffs Road and State Route 179.”