Grounds For Sculpture is a 35-acre sculpture park and museum that was originally part of the New Jersey State Fairgrounds. Founded in 1992 by John Seward Johnson II, it opened it's doors to the public in 2000. Today, this sculpture park is home to over 240 large-scale contemporary sculptures, more than 2,000 rose bushes, 1,000 trees and numerous other flowers and shrubs planted to provide a beautiful setting for art. Waterways have also been excavated to create topographical contours and backdrops for sculpture.
Our first stop was the museum's visitors centre. A little tip for all of you who are planning to visit the Grounds For Sculpture. Head over to the visitors centre first before you do anything and buy yourself an Exhibition Site Map. It's only $1 and trust me, it will be a dollar well spent. Apart from a detailed map, you can also find all sorts of information about each sculpture/exhibition. Also, you can fill out a short survey at the information counter in the visitors centre and you get a Grounds For Sculpture souvenir poster free!
We had a great time just walking around the beautifully landscaped park, looking at various sculptures. Some were cute, modern looking and abstract...
While some was just downright weird! :P
Some of our favorite exhibits were works by Seward Johnson. A number of Johnson’s tableaus based on well-known nineteenth-century paintings are on view throughout Grounds For Sculpture. In the park are such favorites as Déjeuner Déjà Vu, inspired by Manet’s Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe and Family Secret, which is from Renoir’s On the Terrace. Here is an example of one of his more popular work in the park. He recreates Edouard Manet's (1832-83) painting, Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe, in his sculpture Déjeuner Déjà Vu with precise accuracy. It is difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is art. Johnson's three-dimensional play on a two-dimensional artwork brings Manet's painting one step closer to real life. Pretty cool eh? Here are more photos of his other works.
Yup, the best thing about recreating two-dimensional artwork to three-dimension is....we get to goof around and feel like we are 'part of the painting' :P We have tons of photos of us in various silly poses but we will spare you the ordeal of looking at them and just show you a few.
Another highlight is the Grounds for Sculpture’s charming restaurant, Rat’s. Rat's was conceived with Seward Johnson's vision of making visitors feel they have stepped into a village reminiscent of French impressionist Claude Monet's beloved town of Giverny. Overlooking Johnson’s sculptures inspired by Impressionists paintings, as well as the lily pond and bridge inspired by the works of Monet, Rat’s offers a magical ambiance for dining and a lovely compliment to the Grounds for Sculpture experience.
Here is the famous lily pond and bridge. With the smoke machine constantly going off at various intervals, it really does look like something out of a Monet painting. Don't you think so? Very beautiful.
After a long day of walking around the exhibits, we headed over to The Gazebo for a drink. Light snacks are also served here. The Gazebo is only opened during the warmer months of the year.
Here we are with our root beers. Too bad you can't really see the pond behind us. It was just so beautiful, with water lilies and willows trees by the bank. A perfect place to just sit back and relax. Drinks don't come cheap though. It cost us $7 just for two bottle of root beer :P You can also bring a picnic basket if you like. There are many picnic tables set up near the lake, all with awesome views.
We ended the day by heading over to the Domestic Arts Building to check out the museum gift shop as well as the Water Garden exhibit next to it. Back in the day, the Domestic Arts Building was an exhibit hall built in the 1920s for the NJ Fairgrounds to house displays of handicrafts, needlework, canned goods and other practical arts relating to the home. Today, it houses the museum gift shop as well as a cafe. Here are some photos from the Water Garden.
We spent just about 10 minutes or so here, cos it wasn't all that big. Also, the sky was getting dark and it started to drizzle a little, so we decided to call it a day.
On the way to the car, we stopped at the garden just next to the car park to snap a few photos of the peacocks. It's known as the peacock garden and you can find peacocks just roaming freely. I've never seen so many peacocks roaming freely in one small area. Cool stuff! :D We had a great time at the Grounds For Sculpture, a perfect place for a short getaway/day trip from the city. We will definitely try to return next summer, this time...maybe with a picnic basket!
Grounds For Sculpture
18 Fairgrounds Road
Hamilton, NJ 08619
Tel: (609) 586-0616
Fax: (609) 586-0968
Web: http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/
The Annual NJ State Fair @ Meadowlands is here again! It's the largest state fair in the whole of NJ, with over 150 rides and attractions! Kevin and I have been wanting to go since it started on June 25th but we never got around to it. At last, we managed to go last Friday (since the last day was July 12th) night. It's located at the Giant's Stadium Fairgrounds, about 15 - 20 minutes away from our apartment :D We arrived at around 8pm and parking was fairly easy. I guess it's because of the big car park or maybe it's still considered little bit early. Parking is $3 for the entire night. 
We got our tickets at $9 ($7 for weekdays) a person at the door and was given the option to buy an unlimited ride stamp for an additional $19.90. We passed on that, I don't think we will be riding enough rides at the fair to make it worthwhile. I guess it's a good deal if you have kids with you. 
Our first stop was to go take a ride on the Skyride. It's actually a ski lift that goes from one end of the fair to the other. We figured it's the best way to check out the fair, to see what we want to do and stuff. The view was amazing from up there, check out this little video clip that I took when we were on the Skyride. 
Yup, that's right. It's time for the long awaited Pig Races!! Hahaha! I've never seen pig racing before and I was pretty excited to check it out. We made a point to get to the arena early, so that we will get front row seats. There were three heats, here is a video of the second heat. Aren't they just so cute? They look pretty fast here but you should see the third heats. It featured the Asian Pot Bellied Pigs. Boy were they fat! I mean, they were so hugeee..it wasn't even funny. They were just merrily strolling along the track, I think it took them about 3-4 minutes just to complete the race. It was funny! 
Check out what's next to the petting zoo. Noooo, you are not allowed to pet those! Hahaha! They are actually part of the famous tiger show act. It's free and there are 4 performances per night. We didn't managed to catch the acts cos there were other shows that we wanted to see going on at the same time as the tiger show. However, it was cool that we got a chance to get up to close to real tigers...we were just a few feet away from them! 
There were also elephant rides (the elephant is 41 years old!), camel rides and pony rides.
After all that walking around, it was time to get a snack! There are over a hundred food stalls at the fair, selling all kinds of yummy carnival food. From turkey legs to corn dogs to funnel cakes! We shared a funnel cake (of course!) and Kevin also had a large pretzel too! The funnel cake was hugeeeee and really good. It better be good, we paid a good $6 for it! Just imagine, $6 for some dough and sugar...tsk tsk tsk :P
Another good thing about this fair is that there are constantly live shows to watch. Apart from the pig races, we also managed to catch a mini concert by a local band as well as a magic show by the people from Festival of Magic. There were also other things going on like a show by hypnotist Steve Bayner, the Marcan tiger show and a bicycle tricks show.
Apart from live shows, there were also all kinds of rides and carnival games. I just love the whole atmosphere at the fair.
We ended the night by going for a midnight (well, more like nearing 1am) ride on the Giant Wheel. The view from the wheel was just amazing! We could see the whole Manhattan skyline, all lit up as well as a few bridges and of course, a birds eye view of the fair itself. With the nice cool breeze blowing in our faces and the beautiful view, it was definitely the best way to end our evening at the fair :D
So we started picking...
All this walking around and picking strawberries made us hungry. So, we headed out to the Hen House food cart located on the grounds of the farm to sample some home made strawberry treats. We ordered a strawberry milkshake ($4.95) and strawberry shortcake ($3.95). They had all kinds of strawberry treats as well as German food like potato pancakes and bratwurst for sale too. Of course you can also get the regular hot dogs, cheese burgers and chicken sandwiches if you like.
The strawberry shortcake was soooo yummy. It was really the authentic type of strawberry shortcake, with the cake tasting a little bit like scones or biscuits. The milkshake was really good too. Huge chunks of strawberries, really really good!
After our snack, we decided that it was time to head home. As we pulled out from the driveway of the farm, the rain starting to come down. Not just a light drizzle but really heavy rain. Looks like God really answered our prayer and held the rain until we were safely in the car, on our way home! What a perfect way to end a perfect day of picking our own strawberries.