this enormous sculpture stands at the end of the road which leads away from one of the farms we're looking at. i made husband stop so i could snap a few pictures with the zoom lens from a distance. it stands in all its strangeness on a little hill, with a small shack beside it. i didn't realize it 'til i got the photos home on the computer, but if you look closely down in front just outside that rope that's fencing off the sculpture, there are many little plastic dolls arranged in strange ceremonial homage in the grass.
and just as i was wondering what on earth it was all about, i opened my local newspaper and there was a story about the place. it was done twenty some years ago by an artist named edwin westergren. a swede by birth, he was adopted or at least raised by a family in denmark and ended up on a farm near the large sculpture, making his art. his sons live on the place now, among the now rather overgrown remnants of his sculpture. one son, who looks to be an older man himself from the pictures in the paper, goes around to kindergartens with his soulmate (his words), spreading the joy of native american music to children. as one does if one is an older danish man from the quiet side of the fjord.
it appears we could be moving to an interesting and rather colorful neighborhood. we're taking our favorite polish carpenter (who we would still like to adopt) with us to look at it this weekend, so we're getting closer. we'll just have to hope those people looking at our house this weekend appreciate the new, clean, white, no longer
red or artistically balkan, pristine hallway (don't worry, it'll be done by the time they come on sunday). we did leave the maps on the ceiling. we have to have something that's us in this place, we do, after all, live here.
back later with my first week of
calendar art journaling and how it's going on that simplicity project. and do be sure to check out the
blog camp 365 pool on flickr. it's going very well! and it's not too late for you to join in!
