On the outskirts of Frankfort, Kentucky, Melanie VanHouten has transformed her childhood wonderland into a sprawling sanctuary for public art — and the only sculpture park in the state.
Featuring more than 70 large-scale sculptures created by artists from around the world, Josephine Sculpture Park isn’t the type of exhibit space where the art is meant to merely be seen. Scattered along a web of trails that meander through a native-rural landscape formerly owned by VanHouten’s grandparents, the artworks are almost all designed to be touched – in fact, many are intended to be climbed on, crawled under or otherwise enjoyed.
Established in 2009, Josephine Sculpture Park has evolved over the past 12 years from a modest sculpture garden with about a dozen artworks into an expansive oasis for exploration. Located on 30 acres of a former tobacco farm that has been in VanHouten’s family for more than half a century, the park features a plethora of event, education and exhibition space, and has become an increasingly popular regional destination for families, art lovers and other curious souls.
Melanie VanHouten has turned the Frankfort tobacco farm purchased by her grandparents in the 1960s into a haven for public art. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
While the park now hosts thousands of visitors a year, VanHouten associates her earliest memories of the land with the countless hours she spent exploring it by herself as a kid.
“Most of my childhood memories are out in this place and on this property,” VanHouten said, during a recent ramble along the park’s trails. While much of her childhood was spent in the Frankfort area, VanHouten said that she and her family moved houses often, but she always saw the property as a constant connection.
“Back then, I just spent a lot of time out here by myself,” she said. “I had free rein.”
The land had a big impact on VanHouten as a child – and so did her late grandmother, Josephine, the namesake of the park. VanHouten describes her grandmother as an environmental steward who instilled in her from an early age the importance of taking care of the planet and fostering a relationship with the land.
“[She] had a big garden and was an amazing cook – she was always canning food and was really very aware of all these environmental issues,” VanHouten said. “This was in the late ’70s and the ’80s… She would talk to me about littering and not wasting water, and those subtle things like growing your own food.”
Those principles have always been personally significant to VanHouten and have helped guide the mission of Josephine Sculpture Park since its inception.
“The mission from the beginning has been to connect people to each other and the land through the arts,” she explained. “Art, the environment and the community – all three are pretty significant and equally important in terms of who we are and who we want to be.”
In describing the guiding forces behind Josephine Sculpture Park, “ecofeminism” is another term that VanHouten references. As an exhibition space and education center, the park has always made a special effort to provide opportunities for female and minority artists – artists whom she says historically haven’t always had the support of the art community at large. Of the artists who have exhibited at the park or participated in its artist residency program, more than 60 percent have been women or artists of color.
As a female sculptor who came of age in the ’80s and ’90s, a time when Van Houten said teachers rarely highlighted women and minority artists.
“We didn’t learn about them – I had to go find them on my own,” she said.
As Kentucky’s only sculpture park, Josephine Sculpture Park is there to provide a place where budding artists of every background can see a future for themselves in the arts, and VanHouten feels it’s important to take an active role in creating that narrative.
“We want to be a place where kids and families that are creative can connect and nurture their own creative gifts and connect with professionals in that field who look like them,” she said.
Nurturing artists has become an increasingly important focus of Josephine Sculpture Park. A registered 501c3 nonprofit, the organization has supported more than 22 artists over the past 12 years as part of its artist residency program, which has traditionally hosted three to five artists a year. The robust program has expanded recently, with the National Endowment for the Arts having doubled its financial contributions to the program last year – this year, the program will support a different artist each month from May to October, for a total of seven artists in 2021.
Artist Amery Kessler, a recent artist-in-residence at Josephine Sculpture Park, experiments with his project Shae Sail Light Path in the park’s art studio barn. May through October this year, the organization will host a different artist-in-residence each month. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
Through the program, artists are offered the opportunity to live and work at Josephine Sculpture Park, where they can create original artworks for exhibit at the park, interact with the public, and lead workshops and/or community activities.
“They can kind of pick what they want to do and what will support their practice,” said VanHouten, who got her Masters of Fine Arts in sculpture at the University of Minnesota and was head of the sculpture department at St. Catherine University in Minnesota for a number of years before deciding to return home and focus her artistic and professional energy on opening the sculpture park.
This experience as both an artist and an educator have given VanHouten a special understanding of the impact that supportive and transformative programs like this can have on emerging artists. The organization also regularly provides a venue for art students to host their Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and Master’s in Fine Arts shows, enabling them to do things they wouldn’t be able to do in a traditional gallery setting.
While VanHouten has largely taken a step back from creating sculptures herself in recent years, she sees Josephine Sculpture Park as an enduring artistic effort itself, connecting her love of art, nature and community into an ever-evolving labor of love – one that continues to unfurl in new and unexpected ways.
Located on Lawrenceburg Road in Frankfort, the park is open to the public daily, from dawn to dusk. Visitors can bring their dogs and admission is free. The park also regularly hosts events, from “night sky walks” to artist presentations and festivals. More information can be found at www.josephinesculpturepark.org.
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emlythmsphoto
Josephine Sculpture Park is open every day for free from dawn to dusk — no appointment needed. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Josephine Sculpture Park is open every day for free from dawn to dusk — no appointment needed. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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emlythmsphoto
Josephine Sculpture Park is open every day for free from dawn to dusk — no appointment needed. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
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Josephine Sculpture Park is open every day for free from dawn to dusk — no appointment needed. Photo by Emily Giancarlo