Driving through farmland along the Mississippi River just south of Minneapolis, I noticed a lush green field filled with sculptures--huge, interesting masses of steel that us urban folk are used to seeing along our city sidewalks, certainly not in pastures.
"Pull over!"
It turns out we had stumbled upon the Anderson Center, an artist community outside of Red Wing, on the site of Alexander Pierce Anderson's former laboratory and farm. Who was Anderson? Well, he invented puffed rice cereal, which made him a wealthy man, and he was a great supporter of the arts.
We strolled through the grounds--dozens of sculptures, a large patch of native prairie grass, a platform for gazing out over the garden, and a red-brick water tower built by Anderson. My kids were captivated by a great white shark created with recycled stuff, a surfboard, a skate board, pieces from a lawnmower.
We peeked inside some of the studios and that's when we met Art Kenyon, who is a painter and print maker. Kenyon worked for the Red Wing Shoe Company in town for 34 years and now he's retired, living the artist's life. He gave us a tour of his studio, the walls adorned with a wide variety of works, and showed us the different stages that a painting goes through before becoming a final product. I asked him about the Anderson Center and here's a sound bite from him:
1 comments:
What an amazing place you found.
When I was a kid, it was all about history. I could spend 10 hours in the car if we were going to a fort or Prairie town or even to a cemetery where I'd get an idea of what life was like Before.
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