Dan's Papers - July 11, 2008 - New Sculpture at LongHouse Reserve

While there are many well-known sculpture gardens throughout the world (this critic is most familiar with those at Washington's Hirshhorn Museum and Henry Moore's home in England), there is really nothing as special as the LongHouse Reserve. No matter how unpredictable life seems at the moment, somehow we can always depend on the flowers blooming at LongHouse and the magical appearance of new sculptures. It's as if they had sprung from the earth like the plants themselves.

The current crop is extraordinary in every respect. Keeping with LongHouse's attention to diversity, these sculptures also celebrate various materials and forms. Near the entrance, Ben Tre's "Two," a cast glass and lead sculpture, brings a bouncy, energetic attitude to the setting. What we notice is the split space connecting the two pieces; it's a pattern which continues in some of the other works.

For example, there's Izumi Masatoshi's Swedish granite piece, "Fuyu." Not only does the work have two spaces between the blocks, but we first glimpse the sculpture through a similar slit in the bushes. Thus, different parts of the shapes are not connected to each other, forming a solid entity.

We can't resist interpreting this recurring spatial configuration which is most likely there by chance. One idea that comes to mind is the way the space creates an open door through which we see what's beyond the sculpture itself. This effect allows us to imagine the pieces as being integrated among themselves and the garden.

There are other surprising uses of space. Consider the fountain where water shoots up like a geyser, but where water also plunges downward through an incredibly designed hole in the base. (We're told that the piece is an homage to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.) Bryan Hunt's work, "Plunge," is also an ode to water, yet its exquisite shape recalls a sailboat, perhaps, or a flying bird. While a piece like Paolo Staccioli's "Warriors" offers no reference to water, it is, nonetheless, a gem. The two figures, however, recall other sources stemming from both ancient and modern cultures, their elongated bodies and small heads reminscent of Alberto Giacometti. Keeping with the varied styles, Louise Bourgeois's "Avenza Revisited II" presents a more complex configuration, the bronze material weighing it down heavily to the ground. It is one of the few newer sculptures which is horizontal in form and purpose.

The LongHouse Reserve is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2-5 p.m. Call 631-329-3568.