Tat’s Bizarre Travels

Trenton, NJ – It was off to Jersey this weekend to see the giant tooth! I love giant things, but this giant tooth isn’t your average everyday oversized item. It’s part of Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey’s largest sculpture park. Although I skipped the park, I couldn’t miss the tooth. Titled Comprehension by J. Seward Johnson, it can be seen right as you get off (or on, depending on which way you’re coming from) I-295.

When I came off the highway and saw it I thought that it must be popular, seeing as there were 2 people standing right in front of it. It took me a while to notice that they weren’t people. They were part of the sculpture, and they’re great for determining the scale of the thing. They are a man an a woman looking at the large tooth-like structure with bewildered faces. From one side it’s very obviously a tooth, but from the back it’s a bit of a mutated tooth. A woman who stopped to take pictures with her husband and grandson told me she thought it looked like and elephant. She also mentioned that when they look at the thing both her and her husband feel like they’re making the same faces.

I have to admit the former snotty art student in me loved this sculpture. Not only because it’s a big thing (In fact for years if it wasn’t an Oldenburg I didn’t consider it art, I couldn’t have been more wrong! Now I wonder if Oldenburg is to arty to be an odd find), but because part of the point of art is to push boundaries and making people think. If that means pulling over to the side of the road to take a picture with a Giant Tooth than it’s done it’s job. It doesn’t need to be dipped in formaldehyde to art, it just needs to make people stop and take it in. Weather they like it or not.

picture coming soon

Philadelphia, PA – So, the world’s largest piñata isn’t really a travel destination as much as it is/was an event, but it’s still giant so I’m going to write about it.

The plan, concocted by Carnival Cruise Lines, was to built the world’s largest piñata and crack it open so that 8,000 pounds of candy would shower a parking lot of onlookers. It didn’t really happen that way, thus disappointing all that had come to watch… and nearly causing a riot. All in attendance were hugely disappointed, and although I was sad, there were some highlights that made it worth while.

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Tacoma, WA – Dale Chihuly’s Bridge of Glass connects Tacoma proper with the Museum of Glass. And if it wasn’t for the Bridge of Glass, the Museum of Glass would be like any other museum out there. In fact, I’d give a pass on the museum and just head on over to the bridge. It will save you the entrance fee and the only (slightly) unique thing you’ll see inside the museum is a team of glass blowers making giant apples, or other a sundry chakies to sell at the museum store.

The Bridge of Glass, however, is worth the visit. It’s not a bridge made of glass, like I desperately hoped (in my mind I pictured a giant amorphous Chihuly glass bridge that you could walk on and somehow withstood the elements and thousands of people walking on it), but instead it’s filled with Chihuly glass well worth a small fortune. Although slightly disappointing, because it’s filled with glass instead of made out if it, you’ll get over it as you see the plethora of Chihuly in a row and overhead.

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