A Tale of Two Parks

Though fundamentally similar to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden—all three green spaces embrace the role of art as a creator and a feeder of community—Franconia and Caponi are very different from their city cousin and from one another. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden functions as an outdoor gallery in which the vegetation creates open-air rooms. In contrast, Franconia and Caponi are integrated into the landscape in such a way that you are pulled into the environment—and into the creative process. Franconia and Caponi have their own distinctive feel, but both provide a compelling reason to leave the city for an afternoon. So, what are you waiting for?

Anyone who’s ever dreamed of an art utopia might think they’ve arrived when they step out of their car and into the alternate universe that is Franconia. It’s the sort of place that exchanges pretense for free-spiritedness, as evidenced by the park’s blue crane that’s emblazoned with the phrase “Makin’ art and breakin’ hearts.”

John Hock, Franconia’s artistic director, is the hub around which swirls a rotating landscape of resident artists, sculptures, and curious onlookers who stop by the park every day of the year. Hock spends part or all of every day at Franconia, chatting with visitors and working with the artists-in-residence to physically shape the park. His near boundless energy always keeps him moving onto the next thing, whether it’s looking for an artist bio, asking his assistant a question, answering his cell phone, or lighting up a cigarette.

Originally from Washington, D.C., Hock came to the Twin Cities in the early nineties after working in New York City. Like many midcareer artists, he was looking for a supportive environment in which to make art. In 1996, Hock, with friends Fuller Cowles and Tasha McNutt (who eventually married Hock), leased a sixteen-acre plot of land in Shafer and wound up developing just such an environment. Initially, the focus of Franconia was on creating a place for artists to work, but it has evolved into a place for sharing the experience of creativity and the process of art-making with others. “I believe we’re here 75 percent for the community,” says Hock. “I hope we provide a broader experience not just in the arts, but in whatever humanistic thing we’re portraying here.”

Franconia is constantly evolving physically too. It is a collaborative environment where emerging and midcareer artists from around the region and beyond can work in residence for as short as three weeks and as long as three months. Experimentation is the rule rather than the exception. Not only do the sculptures change throughout the season as new work is completed—thirty-five of the seventy or so pieces on display at any one time rotate out—but the whole operation is moving this fall to a larger, twenty-acre location nearby, with the plan of expanding an additional forty acres over the next five years. “What we’re trying to do is give as many artists as possible an opportunity to make new work,” says Hock.

The area where much of the sculpture is made is a world filled with heavy equipment, piles of salvaged junk, and six gantries holding twisted metal aloft as it is shaped to fit a creative vision. “We’re here for the community as much as the artists,” says Hock. The openness of the place makes that hard to refute: Visitors are allowed and encouraged to interact with the artists while they work.

On this spring day, sculptures in an intriguing diversity of shapes, sizes, materials, and themes stand amid patches of tall grass. Among the pieces are an optical illusion–inducing chainlink maze, a giant crochet-covered hay bale, and roadkill in metal relief. One particularly whimsical piece—a larger-than-life sculpture playground with odd and wonderful touches such as a “fly-through back-scratcher for birds,” according to Hock—invites play. And if kids find the sculpture too enticing to pass up, they’re welcome aboard, he says.

“Sculpture is another aspect of the world,” says Hock. “It helps people look at things differently.” The idea works in reverse too. Opening the creative process to public view has changed the way Hock views the role of art—and Franconia.

It’s been said that art imitates life. Caponi Art Park, nearly sixty miles south and west of Franconia, makes the case for art imitating nature as well. The place is so organic, the art so infused into the landscape, you might not realize you’ve stumbled upon a suburban sculpture oasis until you’re in the thick of it.

Art park eponym and visionary Anthony Caponi is a respected sculptor, educator, and former head of the art department at Macalester College. “I did this for joy,” says Caponi of the park. With the amount of effort the park required—Caponi wrangled for years with the city to support his vision for the park and make it a permanent public trust, and he moved huge mounds of earth to reshape the land and make it a massive, living sculpture in its own right—it couldn’t be otherwise. Fortunately, this is a case where one man’s joy brings enchantment for all.

After purchasing the sixty-acre tract of land in Eagan in the 1950s, Caponi began turning it into a work of art. Except for one sculpture, all the pieces were crafted by Caponi, with assistance from his wife, Cheryl, who has a background in art. The park, which opened to the public in 1994, is equal parts nature preserve, sculpture park, and exercise in holistic philosophy, and that’s just as Caponi intended. “The place reminds you how bound we are to nature,” he says. The way the art fits the environment speaks to that premise. Small details pop out of the landscape, and the landscape has been shaped in such a way that, like art, it reveals itself in surprising and unexpected ways. It’s what Caponi calls “orchestrated nature”—art made to fit the landscape and landscape sculpted into art.

The sculptures embedded into the side of the curving walkways that are adjacent to Caponi’s studio are a case in point: One sculpture is of an undulating snake, the other of entangled bodies settling into the earth, an homage to the destruction of Pompeii. Another example is the tunnel under Diffley Road, which connects the two sides of the park. Where the north end of the tunnel is a mix of refined sculpture and rugged landscape, the south is a maze of paths and gathering spaces.

Caponi’s attitude toward art—that it’s a form of play and an essential part of the human experience—is rooted in his early years of playing with clay in the mountainous Italian village of his youth and is evidenced by the park’s sculptures, which are intended to be accessible and touched. The idea is involvement rather than just admiration. “Art is a rare thing,” says Caponi. “Creativity is not.”

While he doesn’t interfere with visitors’ experience of the place, Caponi is often at work in his studio and open to interacting with the public. With striking white hair and bushy eyebrows and mustache, the eighty-five-year-old man is hard to miss.  Over time, thought, he’s observed the effect the place has on visitors. “People come out [of Caponi] a lot different than when they come in—more excited, more engaged,” he says.

Caponi, who considers the park a work in progress, says, “I tell everyone I can get to listen that I’m making a sculpture park out of this whole sixty acres.”

Out of Town and Into Art
Here are some ways to make the most of your summer and these parks.

You can stop by Franconia Sculpture Park almost any time to see artists at work. Open daily from dawn to dusk. 29815 Unity Ave., Shafer, 651-465-3701. From the Twin Cities, take 35E or 35W north. Exit at Route 8/Taylors Falls. Take Route 8 east about 19 miles to Franconia, which is on the right side of the road.

Caponi Art Park comes into its own in the summer, when the natural environment comes alive in relation to the created environment. It’s also when the park offers exploratory experiences and performances. Open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. 1205 Diffley Rd., Eagan, 651-454-9412. From Minneapolis, take 77 south, or from St. Paul, take 35E south, to Diffley Road. Take Diffley Road east about a half mile past Pilot Knob Road. Park entrance is on the right side of the road.