Another Sculpture Park

 Happy Friday everyone. I'm back today with some photos from another recent walk I took with my walking friend Jo.

This time we took a little ride (about an hour and half for me) to Andres Art Institute in Brookline, New Hampshire. There we walked through New England's largest sculpture park.

I'm going to write about the walk out of order here to tell the story better.

Let me start about 3/4 of the way up Potanipo Hill, which is the name of the hill this park is located on. This hill was one of the first lift served ski areas in New Hampshire. It went by the name of Big Bear and later Musket Mountain. This ski area closed in 1984.

The land was then bought by Paul Andres, a local benefactor, and a sculptor, John Weidman. In this next photo is the sculpture studio they created.

When we were walking towards the studio, a man came out and introduced himself as David. He asked if we wanted a tour of the studio, and we said "Of course."

It's a pretty amazing place, and I must say, I'd love a bright and airy space like this for all my supplies and to work in. (It is good to have dreams, isn't it?)

He told us that each year people apply to come create here from all over the world. They attend something called the Bridges and Connections International Sculpture Symposium. Three people internationally and 1 American get chosen. Each person comes for 3 weeks, in which time they create a statue which is then displayed along the trails of the park. They live with a family who volunteers to take them in and feed them for the 3 weeks.

Because of Covid they haven't run this symposium since 2019.

We even got to meet John Weidman, the sculptor who helped start this interesting facility.

I didn't take tons of photos in the studio because it was really interesting to listen to David talk and have him answer our questions. 

Outside of the studio is a large area where granite and other chunks of stone can be cut and prepared because it is too dusty to do that inside the studio.

This park is 140 acres in size and has about 10 miles or 16 km of trails.  We ended up walking around 4 miles (about 6.5 km), half of it up hill and the other half then back down. We didn't take the same trail twice so we could see more of the sculptures.

The only reason we didn't walk more was it was already past lunch time, and we needed food. There were many interesting pieces here.

I do wish I'd worn hiking boots rather than my sneakers though.

The trails were rocky, steep in parts, and some were very wet due to the heavy rains we had recently had. However, it was a lot of fun to come upon a sculpture, which were quite frequent along the trails we chose, and stopping to see them broke up the steepness in certain parts of the trails.

We did make it to the top without too much of a sweat.

There were great views.

And the sculpture there was called the Phoenix. 

I can see it, rising from the ashes. Can you?

Let me share a few more sculptures this post, and then I will share some others another time. These were some of my favorites.

 The artist info for these 2 sculptures is here.

It was too wet to get over to see who created this statue of the star gazer/astronomer ( the pedistal was standing in a small pond), but it was one of my favorites. I love how the sculpture created the quilted coat.

And with my biology background, this next piece resonated with me.

My friend and I discussed many of the sculptures as we came upon them. The next sculpture was one of them. At first we saw a woman with a baby. Then we decided the woman wasn't young, and perhaps what we were seeing as her baby is her heart.

However you see it, it is OK.  Even if the sculpture had something else in mind. That's the beauty of art.

And so this post doesn't become an online novel, one more sculpture set for today. Don't you love imaging what these animals could be?

I'll share more photos in a Sunday post.

Hope you enjoyed your visit.