HAPPY 25TH GFS: Grounds for Sculpture (GFS) has welcomed more than 2.05 million guests since it opened to the public in 1992. GFS celebrates its anniversary this year through a host of activities, including a festive summer gala in June, plus special programs, themed tours, and pop-up events. One of the new exhibitions for the spring/summer season is “Elyn Zimmerman: Sensitive Chaos,” an exploration of space and sky with photographic collages and pastels like the image pictured here titled, “Heavens Breath.”

In honor of its 25th anniversary, Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) opened its Spring/Summer Exhibition Season on May 7 with five new exhibitions, including a site-specific installation of glass by Daniel Clayman and an exploration of space and sky with photographic collages and pastels by Elyn Zimmerman. GFS continues the celebration with Grounds For Sculpture: 25 Years, an exhibition curated by GFS Director of Exhibitions & Collections, Faith McClellan and GFS Director of Education & Engagement, Heather Brady. 

The Museum Building will become the essential armature for Daniel Clayman: Radiant Landscape, featuring two site-specific interior glass sculpture installations. This exhibition represents the first time that the Museum Building is essential as an artistic element to the inspiration of an artist’s overall concept. One monumental installation will take the form of two towering curved glass planes, reaching from the floor mountings upwards to attachments in the building’s roof girders. The second, installed overhead at the south end of the building, is a brilliant transparent blue glass canopy under which visitors will be bathed in blue light.

Made from hundreds of individually strung glass tiles, each installation consists of transparent three-dimensional color fields that will tower within the vast vertical and horizontal museum spaces of the north and south ends of the gallery. The effect of each installation will be to define unique space and create an experience of ever-changing light and color for visitors to the exhibition.

Also on view will be a series of three glass “boulders” in the nearby gardens. The mezzanine gallery of the Museum features an installation of Clayman’s cast-glass sculptures titled Three Volumes, 2012. This work juxtaposes the artist’s mastery of creating such objects with his creation of monumental architectural interventions of glass as in Radiant Landscape.

In the Domestic Arts Building, Grounds For Sculpture: 25 Years celebrates the people, the spaces, and the things that are uniquely GFS. Through never before seen images, insider tales, and hands-on interactives, learn more about the collections, the evolution of the grounds, and the people who have contributed to its success.

Watch the seasons evolve in rotating displays of botanical specimens. Learn more about the art and artists and how GFS cares for this contemporary art collection. See images and plans from the early days of GFS’ development. An open studio space will invite participation. Visitors will see the grounds with fresh eyes and renewed interest having gained a new appreciation for the surrounding architecture, artwork, and horticulture of GFS. This exhibition is supported in part by the Brooke Barrie Art Fund.

In the Cecelia Joyce and Seward Johnson Gallery, That’s Worth Celebrating: The Life and Work of the Johnson Family will focus on the Johnson family’s passions, their belief in the spirit of innovation and the power of community, and how the founder’s vision for The Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture shaped Grounds For Sculpture’s early years. This exhibition is curated by Lynn Declemente Losavio, Collection Manager of The Seward Johnson Atelier. This exhibition is produced by The Seward Johnson Atelier, Inc. and made possible with support of the Johnson Family Foundations.

In the West Gallery, Elyn Zimmerman: Sensitive Chaos explores Zimmerman’s works on paper, juxtaposing her recent photographic collages of the night sky with her lush pastel drawings of clouds. This exhibition accompanies Elyn Zimmerman: wind, water, stone, which opened in GFS’s East Gallery as part of the Fall/Winter exhibition season and is on view through January 7, 2018. The East Gallery focuses on her public sculptural works and the relationship of these works to her archeological photography. Stone sculptures in the adjacent outdoor hedge gardens continue the exhibition outdoors. Elyn Zimmerman: wind, water, stone and Elyn Zimmerman: Sensitive Chaos are supported in part with a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and the following Exhibition Supporters: Agnes Gund, Gordon and Lulie Gund, Barbara Lawrence and Allen Laskin, and Alan White.

Two new sculptures have been installed on the grounds. Seward Johnson’s newest work, Mystical Treasure Trip, is installed in the harbor near Rat’s Restaurant and the Monet Bridge. The work is Johnson’s artistic response to painter Odilon Redon’s painting The Barque and employs unusual lighting techniques to emphasize his intrigue in the sense of magic evoked by the treasure. Harmonize by Barton Rubenstein is a 16-foot-tall stainless steel kinetic sculpture which is set in motion by the slightest breeze. A unique cable system, invented by the artist, allows the piece to mimic the back-and-forth motion of a waltz.

As part of its 25th anniversary, GFS celebrates the power of the written word with The Typewriter Project, an interactive installation sited in the garden through September 28, 2017. A booth, outfitted with a vintage typewriter with a 100-foot paper scroll, will invite visitors to engage with the written word. Marrying analog with digital, the typewriter connects to a mechanism that collects and shares participant keystrokes online. Created by The Poetry Society of New York, The Typewriter Project’s first installation appeared on Governors Island in New York in 2014.

True to its founder’s vision for fun, whimsy, and the unexpected, in its 25th year, GFS is proud to present the east coast premiere of IMPULSE — an outdoor installation of 15 seesaws, which are activated with sound and light when in motion. On site for one month only, the motion of the rider, producing a sequence of light and sound, activates the seesaws. When multiple seesaws are in use, the result is a polyphonic audiovisual installation. “The landscape is transformed by the sound and light emitted by the seesaws when people play on them,” says Lola Sheppard of Lateral Office, the firm that, along with CS Design, created IMPULSE. “The result will always be different, whether there are 30 people on the site or three people on a single seesaw.” IMPULSE will be at GFS from June 10–July 9, 2017.

GFS is located in at 80 Sculptures Way in Hamilton. For more information call (609) 586-0616 or visit groundsforsculpture.org.