Not many public art exhibitions make this invitation on their website:
“Bring your own spray paint, paint pens, or permanent markers and make your mark on Graphologyhenge! This sculpture was created by JSP 2018 Artist in Residence, Peyton Scott Russell, as a site specific earthwork and sculptural installation that serves as a sanctuary for graffiti writers and welcomes anyone to express themselves on the walls.”
But then, Josephine Sculpture Park near Frankfort is not like most public art exhibitions.
The only sculpture park in Kentucky, JSP is constructed around the notion that art is for everyone. In a word, the park is accessible. The sculptures emerge as part of the landscape, and the rural Kentucky farmland provides a level of comfort even for those unfamiliar with art. Free and open every day of the year, the park introduces guests to world-class art and artists in an unpretentious environment.
Kids are allowed—even encouraged—to run, laugh and be physical. “We want them to have free rein to explore and not snuff that out,” said founding director Melanie VanHouten. “We want them to learn how different people express themselves and have a direct experience of the natural world.”
Josephine Sculpture Park is 30 acres of softly rolling hills, with mown trails guiding guests to each of the 75-plus sculptures placed throughout the landscape. Some works are signed: “OK to touch with respect.” Even better for the young and young at heart, a couple of the works are for climbing, operating and exploring. In contrast to a museum, where the main goal is to conserve the art, the sculptures at JSP are designed for interaction.
Andrew Marsh has served as chair of the board of directors of JSP since 2012. A Louisville sculptor, Marsh has exhibited his earthwork Scar Garden and climbable sculpture Function of Toole at the park since its opening in 2009.
“We all need a place to be lost, to wonder, and to be OK,” Marsh said. “All the art, workshops and events—even the park itself—emphasizes the importance of individual discovery and shared worth. It’s an honor to reflect that vibrancy in Kentucky.”
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The Vision
JSP is the creative expression of VanHouten, a Frankfort native. She sees the park, which she and husband B.J. Duvall founded in 2009, as both a way to honor her family history and as the next evolution in her own sculptural creative practice.
The land was VanHouten’s grandparents’ farm, and she recalled having free rein to play there as a child. Her love for it runs deep.
“All the work I ever made was about this place,” she said. “There is a family tradition of bringing people together here.”
VanHouten also had strong ties to her grandmother, Josephine, for whom the park is named. She was VanHouten’s encourager and dreamer. Her loss, when VanHouten was a child, triggered a long spell of grief for the artist.
After VanHouten moved to the Twin Cities area in Minnesota for sculpture graduate school, she visited Franconia Sculpture Park in the rural countryside nearby. Her first experience of a sculpture park had a profound effect.
Back in Frankfort, the family farm was for sale and being eyed by developers. Personally, VanHouten was emerging from the grief over the loss of her grandmother and trying to live an engaged life that honored her legacy. Creatively, her work was expanding to room-sized installations and outgrowing indoor exhibit spaces.
It was an epiphany. “I could save the farm,” she realized. “I could support artists and build community between people. I could start a sculpture park!”
It wasn’t an instantaneous change, but the impulses became more and more interwoven to the point that Josephine Sculpture Park became her inevitable next move. She quit her sculpture job in academia, and she and her husband resettled in Frankfort, working at Wilson Nurseries while they developed her passion project.
“Creating this place is an evolution of my creative practice,” VanHouten said. “I see the park as a huge sculptural experience, a whole composition. This is the sculpture. The art is the place.”
Transformative Opportunities for Artists
Only a couple of the sculptures on exhibit at JSP are permanent, allowing for a constant opportunity to support new artists making work. Through the artists-in-residence program, JSP has created a living-learning lab for artists, many of whom have never before worked on this scale or in the outdoor environment.
“One of the things that makes JSP really unique is that it is driven by artists,” VanHouten said. “We understand what artists need and want.”
Kiah Celeste of Louisville was an artist-in-residence for four weeks in the summer of 2020. She created two sculptures at JSP made exclusively from repurposed, discarded materials that are held in place only by their interdependent relationships. It was a transformational experience in her artistic practice.
“I knew I was meant for it,” Celeste wrote. “A chance to create works with no limit to scale, and resources to help me realize visions I had but no ability to fulfill due to my financial and spatial restrictions, and a place for solace, thought and beautiful open land away from a city.”
Thanks to what Celeste termed the “fierce support” of the JSP staff, she realized her visions and gained attention among the Kentucky arts community, especially from Al Shands of The Great Meadows Foundation. Celeste and Shands are discussing a commission for a permanent sculpture on his property.
VanHouten and the JSP board are committed to respecting and reflecting diverse voices like Celeste’s. That is not the norm in the art world. A 2019 Smithsonian magazine article noted that, in the previous decade, artwork by women represented just 14 percent of exhibitions at 26 major museums in the United States. Women and artists of color represent 55 percent of the artwork on exhibit at JSP. Of the 22 previous artists-in-residence, 14 have been women, and 10 have been artists of color.
In 2021, the park will host seven artists-in-residence. Along with creating a sculptural work, each will offer for members of the community to engage with them through workshops or by participating in building the piece itself. One avenue for interaction is the Appetite for Art events, where guests bring a picnic dinner, chat with the artist, and view the artwork. “It is in-depth and relational for both the participants and the artists,” VanHouten said.
The pandemic gave JSP the opportunity to support another artist, one of its former interns. Jonathan Forrence, a graduating master of fine arts student at the University of Kentucky, has an exhibit at the park. The school’s gallery was converted to classroom space for social distancing measures, so JSP hosted his thesis exhibition.
The six metal and cedar sculptures in “Tied to the Land” balance the value of the handmade with the industrial. The stylized metal trees reflect both Forrence’s rural childhood on an apple farm and his current urban lifestyle. He wrote, “Working through my own guilt for leaving the family farm and abandoning that heritage, I want to share my incredible pride in growing up on a farm.”
Programs and Community Art
Along with self-directed experiences and those led by their artists-in-residence, JSP hosts a range of intentional community programs that fulfill their mission to inspire creativity and a connection to the natural world.
All-ages monthly events include a sculpture tour, a nature tour, and a night sky tour after dark. Year-round art and nature camps on Saturday afternoons have seasonal registration, with the fall session opening in June. In partnership with the city of Frankfort, JSP coordinates Art in Public Places, encompassing murals and sculptures throughout the capital. The Frankfort Public Art Tour shares them with visitors.
As the leaders of Josephine Sculpture Park look to the future, they are asking Kentuckians to partner with them. The Grow With Us initiative will place 150 new native trees and shrubs throughout the park in an interactive and restorative landscape design that combines science and art. Community members can donate toward the project and dedicate a tree or shrub in the name of a loved one.
The plantings will be focused around the additional 10 acres and historic tobacco barn that the park purchased in 2018. Thanks to the donation of the landscape plants and plans by Inside Out Landscape Design, all funds raised will complete the purchase of the park expansion and renovations to the barn to increase classroom, event and exhibition space.
“In 2020, Josephine Sculpture Park was a safe haven for so many people,” VanHouten said. “People were out here every day, sometimes with umbrellas and raincoats. Providing that space in my home community is really meaningful.
“I just try to make stuff happen, even if it seems kind of crazy. This is exactly where I am supposed to be, activating this place.”
IF YOU GO:
Josephine Sculpture Park
3355 Lawrenceburg Road, Frankfort
502.352.7082
For more information on Josephine Sculpture Park and the Grow With Us reforestation initiative, visit josephinesculpturepark.org.