A Tale of Two Parks

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.