H’s been doing the camp program at her school, but it’s only Monday to Thursday mornings. So Fridays have been our field trip days. My mom was watching my niece Grace one Friday last month, and the four of us took a drive out to Grounds for Sculpture.

This place is the coolest, but know what you’re getting into with a small child. None of the art is fenced in, which makes for a beautiful setting, but some cannot be touched. You have to pay attention to the posted signs and watch your small one like a hawk. But, where there is art to be touched, there is tons of room to run and play.

I feel like every childhood photo collection has a photo exactly like this one above. A kid posing under some sort of arch or sign, the photo is slightly off color and taken from too far away, with a haircut that’s kind of frozen in a certain time in history (but I think this bob will always be perfection).

One of my professors from UGA, who passed away some time after I graduated, has a piece here. Horace Farlowe. I remember him telling me about the installation when he learned I was from New Jersey.

There was a lovely restaurant here with beautiful gardens around it. The food is delicious, but again…I didn’t pay enough attention to the map and probably should have steered a party with two kids to one of the cafes instead. Having said that, the rabbit ragu was excellent.

Seward Johnson, who founded Grounds for Sculpture, had an exhibition of his people sculptures scattered around the grounds. July is the final month for that collection of 150 pieces, and it’s such a shame. I would love them to be a permanent part of the grounds. They constantly took us by surprise. From a distance they just look like visitors, and then you do a double-take when you realize.

There was a gallery in the welcome center featuring Johnson’s pop-up exhibition “The Ladies Room,” which included these incredible interactive versions of famous paintings. This was an actual room you could step into.

You could walk around his sculpture renderings of these pieces and see all sides, which was magical. So glad we took this field trip. The kids were both a little young to spend a full day, we cut the trip short after a couple of hours. But it was still a lovely wander with some beautiful art. Fidgety or not, osmosis is sometimes the best way to develop that art appreciation as a kid. It’s what my mom did for us.