The trails at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts are like hiking, but instead of bears you find unusual, large, heavy objects. Art parks provide so much more space to experience the artworks than a museum. My children and I like a good sprint between sculptures more than crowded galleries with a nagging caretaker. Also, I’m thinking the fresh air does wonders for interpretation. We gave the children the maps to the 90 acre property and told them to to lead the way.

Cedarhurst is in southern Illinois. The Mitchell family built their home here in 1936 and opened the Mitchell Museum in 1973. Their bio says they loved “adventures and challenges.” The sculpture park is free and has over 73 artworks. There are paved and unpaved trails. Near the parking lot there is an inside museum and kids gallery. In the back of the property, we found an ambitious earthwork by Jerry Monteith titled “Lightspill.”

After weaving across a field of old trees, I found my son slumped next to Dennis Oppenheim’s smokestack-like sculpture. His face read disappointment and maybe a little put off.  “There aren’t any fires,” he noted. It’s like the Oppenheim sculpture we saw at the Gori Collection in Italy. It makes you want to see the sparks, but it doesn’t actually go “boom.” That one (which you can see in this link) was a large machine made for setting off fireworks that it never actually sets off. At Cedarhurst, “Combined Expressions” connects four smokestacks, but has no smoke. Oppenheim’s machines are complicated, enthralling, and my son might add, incomplete.

I’m glad I was able to see my son’s feelings about these two sculptures. He experienced what is missing in the artwork. And his perspective helped me imagine how I feel about the unfinished structures and purposes in my own journey.  While we wait to see Dennis Oppenheim light one up, we purchased “Awika!” by Chico Bicalho. It is a toy or small aluminum sculpture that winds up, crawls across the floor, and shoots sparks out when it moves.