On the front lawn of the Marvelwood Drive home of Ted Baldwin and Barbara Geller, a young giraffe stretches for food. Nearby, its towering parent surveys the landscape.
A stork cackles while a giant black spider meanders through the low-growing, bamboo-like grass.
All are neighbors in the Baldwins’ free-range residential paradise.
Some homeowners adorn their lawns with inflatable Santas, wicker deer, and other holiday displays. In the spring, others put out whirligigs or garden gnomes. A few, however, defy the status quo. Their yards are year-round outdoor galleries, showplaces for the art they create, or just love to collect. For some outdoor gallerists, showing their art is a means of communicating and creating interest for neighbors and passersby. For others, showing their art makes sense for practical as well as aesthetic reasons.
Baldwin, a retired state judge, said that a shady canopy of trees around his house made growing a conventional lawn difficult. So he and Geller, a state Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services regional director, planted the special grass. It seemed to call out for some of the exotic inhabitants that now slow traffic and bring smiles on the sharp curve outside their home.
Exposed to the elements, some of the welded and assembled creatures develop a rusty patina. Others retain their original finish. Baldwin said that curating his display was simply a matter of showing the things they like. “If we like them, we buy them,” he said.
Less than a mile away on another well-traveled, residential road, “Dog” draws the eye with its machine-like appendages and commanding presence.
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
The Ramsdell Street sculpture is the work of Marcus Schaeffer, aka Markus Surrealius, who fabricates and restores metal sculpture at Versteeg Art Fabricators in Bethany. He has worked on public sculptures including Tony Rosenthal’s well known “Alamo” — the cube sculpture at Astor Place in New York City. The company also restored Alexander Calder’s “Gallows and Lollipops,” the monumental kinetic sculpture at Yale’s Beinecke Plaza.
“Dog” was inspired by the Yale bulldog mascot and Yale’s relationship with the city. “The general aesthetic” he said, “was also influenced by early industrial design and heavy machinery like steam shovels and locomotives. Like most of my art, it’s based on a philosophy/conceptual framework aesthetic I refer to as pre-dystopianism. The abandoned remnants of futures that never were, as it were. Art that riffs on the perennial tendency to romanticize the past and insist that everything is worse today and that it will all fall apart real soon now. Also there’s a bit of steampunk retro-futurism in the design.”
Schaeffer said the homeowner, Camille Keeler, requested the sculpture be placed on the Ramsdell Street property; also, there was no space to exhibit the piece where he had previously lived. Finally, as Schaeffer said, “the whole point of sculpture for me is to allow other people to experience it. It’s a way of communicating concepts that are hard to put into words. That everyone tends to interpret art differently and see different meanings in it is a bonus.”
Walk or drive by the home of Alexander Hunenko at Cleveland and Central Avenues in Westville, and your attention will most likely be drawn to “Skowhegan,” an elongated, bronze abstract sculpture resting on a tall base. His distinctive biomorphic piece is surrounded by well-tended landscaping that includes beds of clover instead of grass.
“We’re all wearing the same uniform, even the grass is the same,” Hunenko said. “Yet we are in the land of freedom.” Born in 1937 in Romanivka, Ukraine, the artist was a refugee and lived in Austrian camps after World War ll. He immigrated to the United States in 1950 and became a citizen in 1956.
The artist holds an MFA from Yale University and has displayed work at the Paul Mellon Arts Center Gallery, Davenport Studio 56 Gallery at Yale University, and the SCSU Art Gallery, with numerous works in galleries and museums around the country.
With another organic-shaped sculpture on the side of the house, the pieces are an extension of his home’s interior, a space that seems more art gallery than residence. His large, two dimensional prints and sculptures abound.
The prolific artist, who has also taught art, said his influences have included many iconic masters, like Michelangelo and Rodin. His pieces, bulbous and sensual, are created with a hammering and bending technique, but little to no welding.
Gallerist Beverly Kaye of Woodbridge, who annually creates a large “Sculpture in the Garden Show” outside her home gallery, displays eclectic and whimsical sculptures that artists around the state have made from repurposed and found objects. Kaye is a specialist in outsider art, and self-taught art.
“Although we are fortunate to have so many extraordinary museums in the New Haven area,” Kaye said, “there is still a large portion of the population who never make use of, nor benefit by these resources. But thousands of those same folk pass by the Peabody Museum and cannot help but interact with the magnificent outdoor sculpture Torosaurus by Michael Anderson. Collectors on a smaller scale are doing the same thing. They are sharing their love of objects and cannot be confined to their interior space to do so.”
Outdoor sculptures in Westville and elsewhere can become local landmarks and points of reference. They can also sometimes become too familiar, hiding in plain sight. There is a payoff for those who stop to really observe, and perhaps meet the exhibitors — people who most likely will extend a hand of friendship just as they generously share their outdoor art.
