Fata Morgana is carved from Cold Spring Granite's diamond pink granite from Rockville Quarry #1, located just west of HWY 23 before the I-94/HWY 23 interchange. The sculpture weights [sic] about 5,300 lbs. and was carved in 2005 by George Kurjanowicz of Barre, Vermont of Kurjanowicz Sculpture Studio. It was commissioned for the 2005 Granite Country USA exposition and donated by the St. Cloud Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to Quarry Park. Installation at the park occurred on June 27, 2013.
The name for the sculpture comes from a natural phenomenon. Fata Morgana is an unusual and complex form of a superior mirage that is seen in the narrow band right above the horizon. It is an Italian phrase derived from the Vulgar Latin for "fairy" and the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their death.
Fata Morgana mirages distort the object or objects which they are based on significantly, often to the point that the object is completely unrecognizable. A Fata Morgana can be seen on land or at sea, in Polar Regions or in deserts. This kind of mirage can involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands, and coastlines. For the mirage to form there must be a steep thermal inversion where an atmospheric duct has formed. This can only occur when significantly warmer air is resting over colder dense air. The atmospheric duct acts like a refracting lens, producing a series of both inverted and erect images.
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