Grounds for Sculpture

You have almost certainly seen the sculptures that Seward Johnson makes, life-sized people in various walks of life, painted with weather-resistant automobile paint in almost life-like colors, standing, sitting, or horsing around in almost life-like attitudes in every kind of weather. There are two of them right on Bridge Street in New Hope, one a Bohemian-looking plein air painter engaged in his craft and the other a pained-looking woman of a certain age carrying packages and apparently waiting to cross Bridge Street. Don't stop for her, if you see her. She's, um, a sculpture.

In fact, they're everywhere. But soon they will gather at the Grounds for Sculpture, where a Seward Johnson retrospective is taking shape even as we speak. I visited the Grounds for Sculpture yesterday and saw many interesting and wonderful things, some of them sculptures by Seward Johnson. The gardens are lovely. A number of the art works are moving and arresting. But the most arresting image I saw was in the parking lot as we were leaving. It was a cowboy leaning nonchalantly on a fence, traveling across the parking lot on the horns of a fork lift. No doubt he was one of the first arrivals at Mr. Johnson's retrospective show.

Kate Gallison