Sculpture Park

Driving to Minneapolis we had a GPS system in the car so there was no chance of getting lost on the way. Kind of took the adventure out of the road trip in the nostalgic sense, but we found ways to keep up the daring discovery without it.

The greatest thing about Minneapolis, in my opinion, is their bike rental. Every evening we'd snag a few bikes and trek out to explore and by far the most note worthy place we stumbled upon was this:

My spoon's too big...

Yep. That is a gigantic spoon. With a cherry on top. Which doubles as a water fountain in the middle of a park. ...

As giant art installations go, this had by far the most wonderment. We biked there in the night and my first thought was, "My goodness. What I would give to play kick the can here."

(For those of you who didn't grow up in rural Michigan, let Wikipeida be your guide to my childhood)

Though the grounds look fantastic in the daylight, I'm sure, at night it lent itself as a surreal playground.

 

We rode our bikes around the paths, through the instillation, weaving in and out, going off on our own and shouting to each other as we found more bizarre aspects of the lot. 

 Huge sculptures looked like some god's discarded plaything. 

  Literally thousands of wind chimes were strung up in grove a trees, tinkling so faintly that I didn't believe they were there until I stood under them myself. Trying to count them was like trying to count the stars, as soon as you focused on another part of the next tree more and more would come into focus.

Just a few feet away the chimes dissipated into the other noises of the night. I stood there, for a while, in the night air and taking in the peaceful moment. What I would do to practice some yoga under those trees.

One installation, though unsettling, spoke directly to me. I don't know what it was called or who made it, but it was a series of granite benches in a huge patio square, all with some observation about life carved into them. This one...

"Affluent college-bound students face the real prospect of downward mobility. Feelings of entitlement clash with the awareness of imminent scarcity. There is resentment at growing up at the end of an era of plenty coupled with reassessment of conventional measures of success."

I had two immense moments in the park. There was an ache to be a kid again, just wanting to play in the night outside with my siblings, setting up shop lights to play baseball after dark and a congruent twinge of guilt at having to grow up and being excited about it.

I ran around and played on a giant wrought-iron swing at the same time that I was puzzling over the aesthetic and intentional underpinnings of a statue of a woman in a fetal position. Is there any intention? Maybe the most I can do is sit under the shadow of some trees and enjoy that moment.