deCordova Sculpture Park

Since I so thoroughly enjoyed the MFA, Lisa suggested we spend some time at deCordova Sculpture Park. She and Jacob have been there before and he loves the place. Jacob is also a fan of the show Work of Art in which artists are given an assignment and judged on their results in competition with one another. We spent a beautiful morning with a clipboard so we could give our own scores to the works of art we saw in the park.

This is called Rain Gates by the artist.  Jacob and Lisa dubbed it Dream Doors during their last visit to the park.  Jacob was having a rough time with some things so Lisa told him to go through the doors and walk into happier feelings.  That time it worked.  This time Jacob told me he was walking into nightmares when he went through the doors but he was strong and taking care of the bad things he found.  We spent a good deal of time romping around this piece together and talking about dreams.  It was a very good conversation.  I love when art does that. We gave this work some high marks for beauty and sparking imagination.

I wasn't able to find markers on everything so I don't know the name of this.  Notice the container with a stick at the end.  Each end had those and visitors were encouraged to use the sticks on the sculpture which functioned as a large xylophone.  We had a lot of fun racing around it chasing each other while we dragged our sticks along the tubes.  The sound drew several other people.  After we were done playing it was fun to step back and watch the expressions of the other people who discovered it.  Not a single person failed to smile ear to ear.  High marks for simplicity and joy factor.

I've read about yarn bombing but had never seen it before.  Throughout the park there were several spots that had been yarn bombed.  I liked the whimsy of it.

This is a detail of Eve Celebrant.  We saw Lilith in the MFA and Eve at deCordova.  I liked that she was carrying a pomegranate instead of an apple.  The come hither gesture also seemed appropriate. 

In amongst a small stand of evergreens I found a group of these guards of the forest called Cones.  I think it would be easy to miss them because of the way they were obscured but I'm sure that was intentional.  They were arrayed in rows and standing at attention but they seemed a friendly, perhaps a little weary and glad for company, as well.

After a little army of pinecone people I found a metal forest.










There was another small grove of trees.  Amongst them were fallen knights in various positions with no markers.  All you Monty Python fans out there will understand why I call this None Shall Pass.

The artist called this Jacob's Dream.  I wasn't all that impressed and Jacob didn't seem to be either.  His happiest dreams involve cats and Harry Potter, not twisted blobs of metal.  Not the highest marks here.

Finally, just as it was time to be departing I found this work entitled The Merry-Go-Round of Hidden Agendas.  The windmill on top moved with the wind propelling small figures with speech bubbles around the track and through the various houses.  The speech bubbles contained one statement on the outside with another perspective on the inside.  It was a pretty fascinating piece of social commentary.  I gave it high marks for creatively getting its point across in a very clear way.