Art and nature are two of my favorite things!
Scrolling my Facebook feed last week a short video featuring Ohio Art Museums caught my eye. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo museums each had a couple photos.Then two photos for the Holmes County Open Air Art Museum appeared in the rotation. What????? I’d never heard of this museum – and Holmes County is about 20 minutes away from my home. Of coures I had to look it up on Google right away!
Located at The Inn at Honey Run the Holmes County Open Air Art Museum features sculptures by local and regional artists. It is free and open to the public. Ideal for a Horse Paintings on the Go adventure – where I visit cool places and photograph my paintings on site. Researching the crowd sourced photos on Google allowed me to scan through my stash of artwork and choose a piece to “pair” with each sculpture. Two days later, my husband and I took to the roads with paintings in tow.
Bring Time, by Katherine Marie, depicts a German-style cuckoo clock. Inviting visitors to pose with their arms depicting their favorite time of day, the woven structure reminded me of the old Ohio bridge in one of my early paintings.
One mistake we made was plugging the inn’s address in our Garmin. The twisty, hilly, dirt roads were cringe-worthy – especially for my husband who had washed and waxed our car the day before. Scrolling ahead on the Garmin, I couldn’t help but tell him, “You’re going to find this so funny, our next turn is onto State Route 241.” If only we’d looked at the directions provided on The Inn at Honey Run’s website before heading out.
I’d called ahead to be sure it was okay to photograph my paintings with the artwork and was just asked to stop at the desk to get a map of the trail. The “map” turned out to be a beautiful magazine featuring not only the layout of the land, but also details about each of the sculptures, history of the inn, and recipes. So classy, and a great promotional piece for the inn.
My husband and I decided to walk the trail first – just to scout out the sculptures and terrain rather than haul all the paintings on the 1.5 mile hike. It was a smart move. One of my favorite sculptures was at the highest point on the trail – and we decided to just take lots of photos of it rather than hike in with paintings. Around the Bend by BLS Collaborative incorporates recycled glass and steel. What an amazing sculpture – and amazing view!
Our other favorites were near the beginning and end of the trail. So we hiked back to the parking lot, collected three paintings that paired with the sculptures near the end of the trail. Off we went to get photos. Then we went back to the car, and traded out for the paintings for the ones to pair with the two sculptures we’d discovered at the beginning of the trail. Perfect!
Chance Medley is a huge mural by Mandi Caskey. It’s theme “a jouney of serenity encountering its counterpart, chaos” is all about nature – at its worst and best. It seemed like a great background for my painting Camarge – Five in the Sea picturing horses galloping out of the waters.
Archer’s Roost, by Lauren Skunta, seems to be suspended in space – which reminded me of my painting Minske floating mid-stride above the ground. Walking under this amazing sculpture I loved the way that light filtered through the 12,000 paint sticks much like it filtered through the leaves on the surrounding trees.
Jeannette Pérez’s Primative Gateways provides a space to reflect and contemplate nature. The circular grave pathway leads under the five gateways, each with beautiful carving on the cedar lintel. The waves of lines reminded me of one of my earliest paintings, Baron.
I loved this totem pole, Face of the Nations, by Holmes County artists Jan and Vince Bowden. Its peering, curious faces reminded me of my painting, Inquiring Minds. Don’t they look good together?
Of course Mother Nature contributed to the Open Air Art Museum as well. Here are a couple of her sculptures we spotted.
And, if you decide to take the hike, be on the lookout for Haiku along the trail. Julie Warther of the Haiku Society of America was instrumental in the Haiku Walk, the first installation in the Holmes County Open Air Art Museum.
