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.

Bentleyville, PA – Big Jim is a giant brown statue of a cowboy with guns a blazin’ and crazy bulging eyes. He’s long and lean and standing guard at the entrance to the Best Western in Bentlyville. They should seriously think about making him the mascot. Seriously, he’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen at a chain motel. He also has a great view of the highway. The plaque on the statue tells you a bit more about him, and it reads:

Big Jim
The Cowboy
Gosai Park, Bentleyville, PA
Standing just shy of 20 feet tall and weighing 3.5 tons “Big Jim,” crafted in stunning detail out of recycled and antique steel parts, was erected in 1978 by artist/welder James Kurtz Sr. to recognise the cowboys of the old west and their contributions to American history. The statue stood guard in Twiglight Buro until 2007.
Restord and rededicated by Dr. Kamlesh Gosai
Best Western Inn June 9, 2007

Meadville, PA – My first stop this weekend was Read Between the Signs (better known as the PennDOT mural), a fantastic and exciting display of environmental art. The mural is really hundreds of road signs expertly lashed to the cyclone fence that separates the the highway from the PennDOT backyard. From what I can tell, it depicts the different parts of Pennsylvania, from the rolling hills to the snow covered mountaintops hilltops. It’s a visual representation of a John Denver song, only much, much, much, better.

When I first read that PennDOT had a “sculpture garden” of flowers made out of street signs, I knew I was in. Little did I know what it had blossomed into. In fact the flowers, impressive though they are at an average height of 6′ tall, are secondary to the mural itself.

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