Benson Sculpture Garden

Detail, “Triangle,” by Kirsten Kokkin

This shows two of the three figures in “Triangle” (2005), by Norwegian sculptor Kirsten Kokkin. I think it may be the best work in Benson Sculpture Garden. It’s certainly among my top favorites. The relationships between the figures, as you circle the sculpture, create interesting forms, as in the case of this smaller triangle within the greater triangle.

Kokkin features this sculpture prominently on her website—in what we’d call the nameplate, if we were talking about a print publication—and that seems fitting; I think it’s also the best of her pieces reproduced there. When I looked up Kokkin’s name a couple of months ago, I found that she’d been under fire in 2013 for numerous misspellings on a memorial she’d done to honor Norwegian resistance fighters in World War II. She attributed this to having used English-language spellcheck when she was working on the memorial in America, and not having a Norwegian program available. As a former editor, I cringe to think of misspellings or typos set in bronze. Fortunately, “Triangle” includes no text, and needs none for its eloquence.

Taking Watch, by Parker Macdonald, Benson Sculpture Garden

I went to Benson Sculpture Garden to walk.

Really, I did. It didn’t even occur to me to take my Olympus along. The only reason I had my cell phone with me was that I was expecting a call from the vet. But I couldn’t seem to get very far down the path without pulling out my phone and taking photographs.

Benson Sculpture Garden is a very popular place for people to exercise, and in particular to walk their dogs. How they manage this, I don’t understand. I tried it once, not too long after moving to Loveland, and discovered that there is no “walking” my little dogs, Ginger and Punkin, at Benson; there is only hanging onto them, barely. The scent of other dogs is so strong that it acts upon them as an irresistible elixir, causing them to pull and tug and drag and stand rooted on spot after spot. My wrists and hands ached so badly by the time we finished our circuit that I’ve never taken them back. On Friday I watched in amazement as other people walked their dogs quite calmly along the curving paths and past the dozens of sculptures. Are my dogs really the worst? It would seem so, which makes me the worst dog owner.

Anyway, dogs aside, above and below are some of my animal favorites from the sculptures. It was the wrong time of day for the best view of the octopus, so I have a shot with a house prominently in the background. And I could have used a shallow depth of field for the cougar, but: iPhone.