North Jersey sculpture parks think big

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The jumbo-size art pieces that can be seen scraping the sky, at three outdoor sculpture gardens this summer, may not be quite as big as all outdoors.

But judge for yourself — because in all three cases, the sculpture is seen in a setting as vast as nature itself. 

A three-foot aluminum bee ("Big Bug") with a six-foot wingspan, made by New York state artist Jodi Carlson out of recycled street signs, is not something you want to annoy at the Clifton Arts Center and Sculpture Park, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year on 26 grassy acres adjoining the Clifton Municipal Complex (there are some 30 pieces on-site).

Nor, for that matter, would you want to get too cozy with the park's "Scorpion," sculpted by Massachusetts artist Matthew Johnson out of scrap steel to be the size of a large dachshund. "You get a chance to observe much more the details than we would in a very, very tiny object," says Sculpture Park director Roxanne Cammilleri.

Further afield, a titanic Marilyn Monroe, skirt blowing up over her knees, looms 26 feet high in cast aluminum and stainless steel ("Forever Marilyn"), over Grounds for Sculpture in Mercer County.

That exhibit, "Seward Johnson: The Retrospective," includes other such outsize figures: among them a 25-foot-high bronze Abraham Lincoln ("Return Visit"), discussing the finer points of his Gettysburg Address with a perplexed modern tourist in a cable-knit sweater and tennis sneakers.

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