The naysayers will try to convince you there is no value in hanging out on Facebook or engaging in Twitter, but I pooh-poohed that in 2009 when Facebook was the connector for a fabulous trip to Italy.
While that’s an outsized example of what social media can do, I get so many ideas from scrolling my timeline and seeing what people are up to. That’s how I happened on my cousin and her husband visiting The Stampede Outdoor Art Exhibition in Hopewell, N.J., which is actually 68 hand-painted oxen placed in locales all over the suburban town.
My 11-year-old niece seemed like the perfect companion for this journey. Gina is on the autism spectrum and she writes and draws voraciously. Aside from trying to explain that ‘oxen’ is the plural of ‘ox’ the afternoon went pretty well.
First I spotted a few of the oxen as we drove into town. Once she understood what we were looking for, she enthusiastically began to scour the stores, municipal buildings and farms we were passing. Where it was prudent to pull over and snap some photos we did, but only after admiring the artwork of each ox. So gorgeous and fun.
Imagine our delight upon seeing Music B. Ox with beautiful, bold-colored musical instruments painted all over the surface or Star the Wishing Ox, who was wearing what looked like a wreath of tags bearing written wishes around his neck.
“This concept is based on cultural traditions related to gathering places for wishes and spiritual offerings, made popular recently by Yoko Ono’s interactive Wish Trees in New York and Washington, D.C.,” it says on the Stampede website. “Star will be an interactive, ever shifting sculpture that engages participation from bystanders and viewers.”
The artists, Tyler Bell and Catherine Haggarty, set it up so those of us who came to view Star at Kerr’s Kornstand, a small family farm, could add our wishes to his neck. Gina and I were greeted by a friendly, lumbering brown dog and she wanted to know his name. We approached the farm stand and were told it was “Chutley.” So sweetly fitting. Then we took our tag and Gina grabbed a Sharpie and excitedly wrote a wish for happiness. We hung it on Star’s neck, right next to one that said “I wish Halloween was more scary.”
Ha!
“While the tags will eventually succumb to the elements of nature, the wishes will endure,” the description tells us.
As the hours passed, Gina was mostly mesmerized with vivid multi-colors, but the ox that fascinated me the most was called Rooted by Linda J. Bradshaw. It was sky blue with birch trees painted on it. I felt like I could meditate in front of its stark simplicity.
“The trees are strong and yet flexible, as are the oxen,” Bradshaw explains on the site. “In my mind’s eye he is an ox shaped window to the sky, not unlike Magritte’s Surrealist images of sky and superimposed images.”
Breathtaking.
And all of this a few hours from my home.
What is taking place within a two-hour radius of your home? What kind of beauty might you be missing out on? What are your fellow human beings creating that you could be witnessing? Or taking a child to witness?
A stampede one day. Who knows what the next.
By Nancy Colasurdo
