A Moment of Peace at the Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colorado
One of my favorite places in the whole world is the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, France, specifically the two magical rooms housing Claude Monet’s Water Lillies panels that he gifted to Paris as an ode to peace after World War 1.
There are 8 massive impressionist paintings that surround you in a room that is designed for meditation, and you should look them up, because the only picture I have has this guy posing in the middle of it:
The scale and craft of these paintings inspires awe, which for me makes it a lot easier to quiet my thoughts and find a little bit of peace of mind, exactly Claude’s intention when he donated these the day after Armistice on November 11, 1918.
I don’t think I need to tell you that we need a more peaceful world in a whole lot of ways right now. And while I’m not naive enough to think that looking at art = more peace, I also think that in our loud, interconnected, not-very-nice-to-each-other-at-all-right-now world, cultivating our own inner peace is always a good idea.
A place I discovered recently that helps me feel the same way is Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colorado, a beautiful public park that is home to 175+ sculptures. I originally found this place with 3 hours on my hands while Kelly got a haircut at our current client Coloroom Salon, which is the perfect amount of time to spend with art according to Professor Jennifer L. Roberts of Harvard, and I’ve been back since and will be back more because I love it.
Here are a few reasons why:
Turns out, I like sculptures a lot
I didn’t know I liked sculpture so much!
Usually I see one bronze sculpture alone, so it really helps to see dozens of them next to each other to appreciate the range of styles and subjects.
I’ll be forever grateful to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver for many things, but one in particular is for teaching me how to look at art via their Art Fitness guided tours. The basic concepts: you don’t need any specific training or education to “get” art, you can just observe and describe what you see, then think about what it would be like if aspects of the art were different.
Which is fun with such a variety of stuff like this:
In a beautiful park, they interact interestingly
As you can see, the sculptures are just hanging outside in different places. The fancy term for this is en plein air , and it’s cool because the setting becomes part of the experience, like when a Great Blue Heron poses near its own sculpture:
Or when a sculpture has a hole in it that creates a cool view:
Or when a hippo comes out of the ground:
The three-dimension physical space of sculpture is so cool, and I also discovered that it seems to be able to create its own special brand of emotional impact.
Case in point, coming up …
I spent at least a half-hour with “Old Friends” here
This is a beautiful sculpture by artist George Lundeen (I met his brother, he graciously gave me a little tour), and I am particularly astounded by how the metal birds in flight still manage to convey a sense of lightness.
However, I was extra drawn to it because my dad Jim died in 2002 at age 50, and I felt like this sculpture gave me a vision of what he’d look like today if he were happy and feeding some birds. The sculptor’s brother said the moustache does this for a lot of people, but for me it was the smile & the moustache (the hat helped too):
Though you may not be able to tell from this beach picture, I never witnessed my dad have much inner peace while he was alive, and somehow seeing this contented smile on a sculpture in three dimensions and bronze helped me think differently about a person who, in a whole lot of ways, I’d written off long ago. And even more improbably, somehow spending time with this piece of art gave me peace of mind within myself that the parts of me I inherited from him are not simply bad, but filled with their own unique possibilities and wonder.
Did I think that was going to happen to me in a sculpture garden?
No, no I did not.
But being more at peace with myself has been a hard-earned process, and in our chaotic world I am grateful for meditative spaces like this one that help me heal my own inner world, and inspire me to do a little more for the one we all share.
Do you know a sculpture garden that I should visit? Want to try spending 10 minutes focusing on one painting? Need to hire me for my “Company Culture Soul Search”? jed@kindandfunny.com.