If you ever want to go tripping without ingesting chemical substances into your body, travel to the hidden depths of Hamilton, New Jersey.  You’ll find a sculpture park there that immediately puts you into a state of altered reality, fake poppies included. Disney world for the arts, for lack of a better description.

Originally old Fair Grounds, the 42 acres were purchased by Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson&Johnson medical fortunes and now a sculptor himself (having majored in poultry husbandry in college…) If you want to laugh today, read this NYT article about him; his biography in some way resembles the feelings you get in his park: larger than life, weirdly concocted, slightly off-color, hard to believe and at its core exhilarating for the sheer force of it.

This is said about his art:”Mainline art critics have not been kind to Mr. Johnson, whom they see as a rich guy who bought his way into the club. ”Kitsch,” ”Hallmark” and ”Norman Rockwell,” are barbs frequently hurled by those who feel that art should be cool, collected and at arm’s length. ”Johnson’s work is chocolate-box rubbish,” said the art critic and author Robert Hughes. ”It has no imaginative component that I can see and apparently appeals to dull corporate minds like his own — the sort of people who run American motels and malls.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/nyregion/seward-s-follies.html?mcubz=0

It actually appeals to those average people visiting the park, as the photographs of interactions with the sculptures show. It has elements of fun and accessibility that are inclusive rather than reserved for elites who “know about art.” They might mock it as Seward’s Follies – I’d say, more power to him!

Grounds for Sculpture was planted from scratch with thousands of trees and tens of thousands of plants, delicate grasses included. The collection, other than Johnson’s own work, is varied; it sure is large, though, and the only thing lacking is subtlety.

Actually, I had a fun visit there. Once you overcome the shock of being in this strange environment you cannot help but admire the chutzpah of the people putting it all together, combining serious three dimensional art with skyscraper-sized figures of Marylin Monroe in full skirt-lift mode. I also could not but marvel at the largesse of Johnson’s philanthropy which surely matches the size of his sculptures. I mostly read up on the sites I visit after I’ve been there, so that my eyes are open without being influenced when I first experience the art. But reading about the people who initiate these ventures as private persons gives me direly needed hope in humanity: there are folks out there who care, who are generous, who want to share their passion. The rest of us are grateful beneficiaries. And in Hamilton, New Jersey, getting high.