On the hunt for open- air sculptures
X MARKS THE SPOT AT THE NEW CANAAN SCULPTURE TRAIL
For out- of- towners, following the new outdoor New Canaan Sculpture Trail can be combination scavenger and treasure hunt: scavenger because GPS may be required to find some of the eight sculptures; treasure because of the reward of unexpected discovery.
Almost hiding in plain sight in the Hannan Eberstadt Field at the corner of Route 123 and Canoe Hill Road is “Passages,” an installation of seven translucent panels by the Norwalk sculptor Thomas Berntsen. There’s no identifying sign and the panels, marching single file through the center of the field, could be a solar array or an air monitoring system.
Actually, they are designed to grow their own beauty. Each panel is a kind of kaleidoscope made from doubled acrylic sheets that besides being translucent are also tinted, distorting and semi- reflective.
On first encounter with one you may be startled to see a stranger. It’s yourself with longer legs and different color clothing than you had on when you entered the field. Through the panel, the field’s grasses and leafy plants are changing color, too. Keep looking and the vegetation begins to invade your chest. Somehow, the panels’ two- way reflective properties turn your torso into a terrarium.
The panels are part funhouse mirror, part mutable landscape painting. Because each has its own tint pattern, grasses can be red or gold. A slight crouch can recolor the sky magenta or tangerine. “Passages” may be the most intentionally interactive sculpture on the trail. But none are made to be just looked at.
All the sculptures on the trail, a joint project of the New Canaan Land Trust and the Carriage Barn Arts Center, were commissioned to be site- specific. Six are on Land Trust properties, where the idea is to experience art and nature together. It would take a day to visit them all, guided by birdsong or dragonflies.
Aquarter- mile walk is required to reach “Mecanitex - Sugar Maple,” a sculpture by Carlos Davila whose studio is in Bridgeport’s Nest Arts Factory. A guide on the Land Trust website ( there’s also a downloadable version with audio) advises parking at the cul- de- sac at the end of Apple Tree Lane to enter the Livingston- Higley Preserve.
The narrow trail in, made narrower by summer foliage, ends abruptly at a hillside field of tall grass. In the center, near the top of the slope, Davila’s “Mecanitex” stands sentinel. The guide says it’s 10 feet tall, but it looks taller, more obelisk than tree.
Made of a marine wood composite, its trunk is deep orange, the color of autumn or a hunter’s vest. Davila has crowned his maple with a twisted chain of triangular blocks said to mimic growing branches. But silhouetted against the sky, its sharp angles take on different shapes; a pointing hand, a crested helmet.
The most remote sculpture may be the
“Labyrinth” by the New York sculptor Christopher Kaczmarek deep inside the Watson- Symington Preserve. Parking at the Wellesley Drive trail- head is easy, but the trail goes up and down and at one point crosses a rocky stream bed.
The sculpture itself is a pinwheel of concentric circles constructed from hundreds of small stones. In the audio guide, Kaczmarek says his “Labyrinth” is not a maze to be solved, but rather a pathway for contemplation. Surrounded by trees and set into a slight slope so the whole can be seen at once, it encourages just that.
At the Calhoun Preserve, no walking is required to reach “Basics 39” by the Brooklyn- based Matthias Neumann. But walking is required to appreciate what, viewed from a car window, only looks like an unfinished cabin. Constructed from standard 2- by- 4 boards, “Basics” is a shape shifter. Depending the vantage point, it may have two windows or four. The roof and the floor open and close like pincers.
Like Bernsten’s “Passages,” Neumann’s
“Basics” is located in a field that by early summer had become overgrown. Land Trust Executive Director Aaron Lefland says the artists agreed to no mowing, “to let the field do what it does.”
The idea for the sculpture trail arose from a conversation two Land Trust board members, Beth Sanford and Nancy Bemis, had with Hilary Whittmann, the executive director of the Carriage Barn center. Lefland says it may be refreshed periodically with new sculptures, if sponsor funding allows. For now all the sculptures will remain in place at least through October, except for “Labyrinth,” which is to be permanent.
The two easiest to find sculptures are in obvious locations. But they also merit more than a drive- by.
Suspended in front of the town hall is a mobile of stainless steel spheres by the Old Lyme sculptor Gilbert Boro titled “After Alex 1/ 14” in homage to Alexander Calder. The nine spheres are of different sizes, like the planets of a solar system. Pushed by a breeze, the spheres behave like bobbing convex mirrors, widening the town hall lawn into a village green.
Likewise, “Ashen,” a stripped tree in the Carriage Barn courtyard by the Brooklyn sculptor Anthony Heinz May, is more than meets the eye. Its thick trunk is the natural blond of an unpainted pencil; its crown of foliage, wood shavings. But a closer look reveals the leaves to be small, carved blocks of wood, and the entire tree, a kind of reconstruction.
The final two sculptures on Land Trust property are “Bloom” on the GreenLink Trail and “Ring Tower” at the Still Pond Preserve. Both have a playscape quality. “Bloom,” by Elizabeth Knowles of New York and William Thielen of Illinois, is a thicket of acrylic strips as bowed and colorful as Christmas ribbon. The 12- foot- tall “Ring Tower” by Joe Chirchirillo of Vermont is made of blue metal and looks climbable.