(Above: Selfie ... with a giant fish in Battle Lake, Minnesota. Click on any image to enlarge for a laugh!)
Today is BEAUTIFUL in Otter Tail County, Minnesota and PERFECT for a Sunday drive. My plan was to take a few selfies with some of the hilarious giant sculptures that I heard were in the area. After all, I've already visited Otto the Giant Otter here in Fergus Falls and Rothsay's 9000 pound Prairie Chicken. So, I went to Battle Lake, a lovely town with a giant fish ...
... and a nice art gallery ... and benches with glass mosaics that were created as a public art project ...
... and Chief Wenonga. Battle Lake was pretty and fun. I had a good reason to be out-and-about.
(Above: Six peacock feathers ... finish and ready to be framed when I return to Columbia next week!)
I just finished six new peacock feathers. Why not take a relaxing drive through the rolling hills of Minnesota in a search of giant sculptures? Why not see just how many selfies I could snap with my phone? I heard that the town of Vining had LOTS of giant sculptures with fiber arts connections ... as in a giant clothespin and a giant square knot.
So ... off to Vining I went ... and I found it!
Welcome to Nyberg Park, a grassy expanse surrounding the Big Foot Gas Station in Vining. It is the sculpture park for Kenneth Nyberg's found metal sculptures! Kenneth's globe is great, and there's a moon dozens of feet away. The moon has a sign explaining the proportions are correct.
The space and size are impressive ... a nice astronomy lesson! Then I noticed a nearby astronaut and a little green alien.
It was Karen Nyberg, the sculptor's daughter ... the first person to quilt in orbit! (CLICK HERE for an article featuring Karen's project for the 2014 International Quilt Festival or CLICK HERE for a video showing Karen quilt in the space lab!) Now this is definitely a fiber connection!
I had no idea that Nyberg Park would have so many sculptures.
Taking selfies is a difficult thing to do. I much prefer to be behind the camera ... not attempting be in the photo! I tried various things in my attempt to capture this cool cup of coffee with me in the frame.
I also took plenty of photos of the sculptures ... and later combined the two.
Nyberg Park also had these strange contraptions ... just sitting there on the grass ... as if a collection of port-o-pots with windows? Finally, it dawned on me. These are ice fishing huts!
Inside the Big Foot gas station there's a guest book for Nyberg Park. The cashiers were super sweet and told me where to go to find even more sculptures by Kenneth Nyberg ...
The clothespin is down the street from Big Foot.
The cashiers also told me how to find Kenneth Nyberg's studio ... down a winding road until coming to the metal rhino and assorted metal pieces!
There are so many hilarious, giant found metal sculptures that I had a blast taking selfies. I think I might have even gotten fairly good at it! All the sculptures in the above collage were made by Kenneth Nyberg.
Before going back to Fergus Falls, I also went nineteen miles to the south to see The Lady of the Hills, a giant sculpture of Mary described as being "in the middle of nowhere". She was built as a promise after a man was cured of cancer ... on his property ... so it might be "nowhere" but it is also exactly where it should be!
On the highway between Houston and Dallas, there is a GIANT, pure white statue of Texas hero Sam Houston. It's especially eerie at night, when it just sort of looms up out of the dark, dense forest at you. Have you ever seen it?
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