#sculpture park

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Victor's Way. Indian Sculpture Park-Wicklow, Ireland.

[laurelroadpoetry]

[hyombus]

Sitting With Takofuusen 8/13/2023

[yumetwokki]

[jsands84]

Running some errands today and the Pappajohn Sculpture Park happened to be in the middle of them.

[javistg]

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

West Bretton. UK.

[the-alternate-realities]

[docileeffects]

[cerealdigitalgallery]

Territories of Dreams by Patricia Lortie & Sabine Lecorre-Moore

Kiyooka Ohe Arts Centre & Sculpture Park, Mohkinstis, Canada

June 2023

[ilovejoyjessie]

the “Hidden Figures” series

+ Photographed by @skyclad.studio (ig) // website

Back in the before times, in 2019, I took a trip to Minneapolis for a concert on New Year’s Eve. With literally 30 hours in the city, I landed on the 31st at 9am, headed to the concert at around 9pm - had a transcendent time - then back to the hotel afterwards. The next day, I had about 5 hours to kill before having to head at the airport to return home. I asked the front desk for a late checkout - they obliged - and at noon I left my room with 3 hours still until I had to hit the road.

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When I can squeeze it into a trip to a new place, I try to make a visit to an art museum or botanical attraction in the area. I looked to see what was nearby and fatefully, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden - home of the Spoonbridge & Cherry and the notable Hahn/Cock - was a short drive from the hotel. I hailed a ride and hopped in, made lively banter with my driver, then soon enough stepped out of the car and down a set of steps onto the snowy park grounds.

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As I walked among the pieces, several of them spoke to me: the fracturedness of Judith Shea’s “Without Words”, the pensive and mysterious “Walking Man” by George Segal, the playful “Empire” by Eva Rothschild, the eerie holiness of Theaster Gates’ ��Black Vessel for a Saint”... Some of them spoke to different feelings I had inside me at the time; others depicted stories I felt I could relate to and wanted to watch unfold before my eyes. I found myself wanting to interact with so many of them - wanting to fit myself into their sculpted moments, entwine my stories and feelings between their crevices and curves. But with only a few hours left in the city, I couldn’t squeeze in the chance to link with a fellow artist to help me capture the visions I had. So I tucked the concept away in my mind and continued moseying through the winding pathways of the park.

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Back to Seattle, the sculpture garden’s marks on me remained. As I embarked on other projects, processing other emotions through other pieces, I also started scouting places I could take my Midwest vision and execute it in the Pacific Northwest. Sure, there's plenty sculptures and statues in the city of Seattle - but getting to and interacting with them the way I wanted to (see my recent mini-post on nudity as vulnerability and power) would prove to be a little difficult...

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A fellow artist mentioned the Olympic Sculpture Park and I thought back to what I remembered seeing there. It’d been a minute since I had last walked through so I visited it again and the pieces that I saw touched me differently from the last time I saw them. Then, I was new to the area - everything shined brightly, glowing with a promise of what was to come for me here: “Which pieces would be the ones that I would grow to understand - which ones would I grow to love seeing in the distance?” But walking through it in 2022, the sculptures spoke to me differently than they did the first time; and in turn, they also spoke to a different me...

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I was seeing the sculptures with more worn eyes. And as I mentally noted which sculptures I could see myself fitting into like I had in Minneapolis, I started to realize that the pieces were reflecting a deeper feeling back at me: The pieces on the Olympic park grounds that spoke to me before were no longer the fascinating landmarks welcoming me to my new home - the pieces that spoke to me were the monuments that emphasized the outsider feelings I had that were settling in.

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In a place I thought I’d fit into, that I thought I had....I was sticking out. The boxes I thought I’d fit into I was pouring out of. The doors I thought were wide open were really just windows ajar just wide enough for me to stick an arm’s length into. The language of the land I thought I knew and understood were now sounding strange. Though I’d been here for 4 years, I felt like a stranger who didn’t belong - an antigen the host was beginning to respond to and filter out, an intrusive thought in someone else’s dream.

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I slowly realized that this concept was bigger for me than just speaking to my original thought of art begetting art as I combined my feelings and stories with the ones depicted on the park grounds. The feelings I had looking over the park pieces stirred the idea to speak to and represent the way I felt about being here now, with this iconic Seattle landscape as the backdrop. “Hidden Figures” then became my next cathartic art exercise - a visual representation of the struggle I felt trying to find my place in the city’s spaces I thought were made for me, the dichotomy of how standing out can be a strength and a hinderance here, and the lonesomeness that can come with being a transplant in the city - baring and presenting all those feelings in the heart of the city itself.

[primathehomonculus]

Diary of a Homunculus, page 8 The Oldhouse peninsula, situated right next to my town, has many sculpture parks and cool buildings ^_^

[msflamingo]

“Man Attacked by Babies”

Gustav Vigeland Sculpture Park, Frogner Park Oslo

[missingpetrock]

Sculpted by Luis Arencibia

Neptuno (Melenara, Gran Canaria).

[susangrannell]

Dragonfly at the Sculpture Park Churt Farnham.

[dancingwithhope]