The Circle Museum, a roadside treasure

On the side of a well-traveled road, near the eastern border of NY with Massachusetts, lies a hidden treasure, a roadside attraction, an outdoor sculpture park that is totally unadvertised, waiting to be discovered by passersby.  My family and I first happened upon the Circle Museum, the brainchild of artist Bijan Mahmoodi, a little more than two years ago, while on our way to visit a waterfall.  I blogged about the discovery in this post, here, written in September 2015.

A couple of days ago my husband and I were coming home from a drive (our destination will be a topic for another post) and decided to bypass highway traffic.  Instead we took a detour to visit the sculpture park again.  It was, again, worth the time. 

The pic above shows just a tiny percentage of the fields full of Bijan's sculptures.  Amazing stuff, whimsical, inventive, and compelling.  And there's so many pieces, including many that have been made in the two years since we were there last.  I look forward to returning again in the wintertime, to see the sculptures draped with sparkling white snow.  I'll bet that its fabulous!

Bijan and my husband chatted for a while while I took pictures.  He learned that Bijan had recently had surgery for cancer, but thankfully doesn't need chemo.  He's been painting while he waits to be healed enough to build some more monumental scrap metal sculptures.  Here's a couple of pics of his studio. 

 This gathering of strange little sculptures in a patch of weeds reminds me of an old overgrown graveyard.  Maybe that was the intent? 

I was rather smitten by this little guy tucked among the trees.

And these gigantic flowers made me smile.

 Don Quixote, perhaps?

Thank you, Bijan Mahmoodi, for sharing your incredible talents with the world! 

An Artsy Chance Encounter

When you are driving down the road and see something  that makes you want to stop, don't keep driving!  I hate to think that if, when I yelled "What is THAT??  STOP the car!", my husband had kept driving.  We all would have missed an amazing experience.  But thankfully, he stopped and backed up, even though we were on our way to beautiful Bash Bish Falls with our son, and we all agreed it was totally worth it!

We almost missed it.  We were busy discussing road signs when suddenly we were passing what looked like some large scrap metal sculptures in a field.  There was a sign that said "Circle Museum", and that's when I started shouting.  The Circle Museum and Sculpture Park is a one-man show - the creation of an incredible artist named Bijan Mahmoodi.

There are well over a hundred large-scale sculptures.

I read that Bijan said he decided to call it  the Circle Museum because, he said, "our planet is based on the circle - the sun, the planets, the moon, and life itself is cyclical.  The circle is what inspires me."  But certainly all the sculptures aren't based on the circle.  There are eagles, and other birds, for example.

 There's a tree made of shimmering curling strips of metal. 

There's these bent-over human-ish forms, that I thought looked like a yoga class.  A friend saw the photos and told me that to her they looked like "deeply exhausted space aliens trudging across a field."  I love that description!

There's many other sculptures that are based on the human form in one way or another.

Maybe my favorite sculpture is one that I didn't realize was a human form right away, and then when I viewed it from another side, I realized that I was looking at someone with a nice round tush!

 And is that a bunny tail on the tush?

And look at this!  A very clever table and chairs, made out of bathtubs!!

Honestly, there wasn't a thing there that didn't totally blow me away, including Bijan, a lovely man who has no web presence and does not advertise at all, but does live off of his artwork.  He gave us his business card, which basically just has a phone # and email address.  He forgot to have his name printed on the cards!  He is dependent on people like us, who screech to a halt. (Luckily he is on a main road.)  He has been located there, I believe, for 30 or 40 years, but spends winters in Europe.

 And a few more random pictures of the many sculptures...

 Below, my son is photographing a piece that reminded him of Sputnik. 

 We did, by the way, eventually make it to Bash Bish Falls, about 10 miles down the road.  There's a great legend about the derivation of its name, which you can find with a Google search.

Storm King Art Center

I've been having an artsy time lately.

 I've already told you, in my previous post, about our Friday night viewing of the sculpture floating above Boston.  The day before that was artsy as well.  Two friends and I took a road trip to the amazing Storm King Art Center, which is situated in the beautiful landscape of the lower Hudson Valley, about an hour north of NYC.  All photos in this post are from that day.  That's me on the right, below, in a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi.  I think perhaps we shouldn't have been in there, but in my defense, she was in there first and I was talked into joining her.  (I know better than to argue with a pregnant lady!)

Storm King is an outdoor sculpture park, and the sculptures, many of which are monumental, are situated within the fields, woods, and hills of the 500 acres of the park.  And we visited about 1/2 the park by foot... Yup, 250 acres of walking.  One of my friends was wearing a FitBit and she'd competed the day's quota of steps even before we stopped for lunch.  A tram circles the park, so we viewed the rest of the sculptures that way, but it is not ideal.  You really want to be able to walk right up to them, and experience them in their location.  But there's no way  to do it all in one day, unless you have much better legs and feet than me!  (By the way, my legs are really short, so I always figure I take more steps than anyone else, just trying to keep up!)

 The piece photographed above and below is by Richard Sera.  It made me think of the monolith from 2001 a Space Odyssey, for those of you who are old enough to remember the movie.

Anyhow, I took hundreds of photos, but I'll just show you some favorites here.  These next photos are from a part of the park referred to as Calder Field.

I was really intrigued by the special exhibition of work by Lynda Benglis, called Water Sources.  I would especially adore having the pink fountain in front of my house!

 

 

  I'm fascinated by the balance on the piece pictured below, by Menashe Kadishman.

 

This really cool piece below is by Ursula von Rydingsvard.

Below left, the tallest sculpture in the park, is by Tal Streeter.

On the right is Frog Legs by Mark Di Suvero.  We thought, from some angles, that it looked like Don Quixote, but couldn't quite figure out the frog's legs.

 

 below, Lichtenstein's Mermaid

 I loved the way this piece below, by Ronald Bladen, looked totally different at different times of day, and from various points of view.

The Storm King Art Center was founded in 1960, and in 1972 they began building the collection of large scale sculptures, including commissioned site-specific pieces.  In 1973, I was a college student at SUNY New Paltz, about 1/2 hour away, and was taking a course in color (darkroom) photography.  A classmate and I got in my little junker car each weekend and picked a direction to drive and search for places to photograph.  I remember, on one of these drives, saying "Hey!  What's that in the distance??  A giant red thing on a hill!  It looks like a sculpture!  Look!  Another!"  But we were on a high-speed road and it was gone before we figured out what we'd seen.  I didn't learn about Storm King until years later, but I'm sure that I'd seen some of the earliest installations, perhaps these pieces below!

 Three-legged Buddha by Zhang Huan

 below, site specific wall by Andy Goldsworthy

 and another site specific piece, by Maya Lin, called Storm King Wavefield

 If you ever get a chance, get on your comfiest walking shoes, bring your camera, and enjoy your day at Storm King!  You won't regret it, I promise!  I'd like to get back in another season - perhaps when autumn colors are at their peak, or maybe in November with a dusting of snow?

 I'll end with two interesting images, I hope.  On the left, looking inside a Louise Nevelson sculpture, where a bird has made its nest, and on the right, the elevator.  Yup, seriously; it is an elevator!