Last Updated on April 13, 2021
This week’s Polaroid is coming a little early since I’ll be sharing my upcoming travel plans and other happenings in my Life Lately post tomorrow.. so stay tuned for a long-winded post on where I’m off to next week and I why that was such a hard decision to make for me.
But before talking about leaving the U.S. : I had planned to return to the beaches of New Jersey all summer, after I was so pleasantly surprised by the beaches of Sandy Hook in June. Somehow, the summer flew by and there was barely any time left for an exploration of the Jersey Shore, until last weekend! But when I finally sat on the train to Jersey, bikini and sun tan lotion packed, it started to rain. My highly anticipated beach getaway got rained out. My friend came up with a Plan B quickly though, and decided to take me to Grounds For Sculpture, one of her favorite places in Jersey. I love public art and sculptures, so I wasn’t too bummed about missing the beaches that day (there’s always a next summer, right?) and once we arrived at the park, I might have even been happy about the cloudy skies and rainy weather: the sculpture park was so much more amazing than I had expected!
Grounds For Sculpture is a massive park of 42 acres / 170,000 m2 and home to more than 270 large contemporary sculptures, many of which are made by internationally renowned artists. All of the pieces are stunning, with a great mix of thought-provoking art, humorous sculptures and incredibly innovative work. I even reunited with the fabulous Seward Johnson ‘Forever Marilyn‘ sculpture that I had seen in Chicago in 2011 for the first time! I loved the amount of interactive sculptures that invite visitors to be part of the display – at least temporarily. We spent hours roaming the grounds, and could have easily spent longer, but we decided to head to the famed Rat’s Restaurant instead, which sits in a beautiful setting by a water lily-filled pond right on the grounds. If you ever find yourself in that area, I highly recommend stopping by Grounds For Sculpture.
