Art: Rocks in the Garden

Splash some color on big rocks, plant them on a hill, call it art and you really set yourself up for the "My-kid-could-do-that" reaction.

Since New York-based sculptor Jim Hodges has done just that at Walker Art Center, it seemed appropriate to ask him to explain what's up.

Hodges' rocks are huge, by the way. There are four of them, each about 5 or more feet in diameter and weighing between 8 and 13 tons. The granite boulders sit in a cozy circle midway down the grassy slope just west of the Walker and overlooking the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

From a distance they might suggest the abandoned eggs of a prehistoric monster, or perhaps something more excremental. A closer encounter reveals shimmering colors -- iridescent pink, gold, lavender and blue -- on their inward-facing sides.

"I never think about who else could do it," said Hodges, 54, who seemed a little taken aback by the "my kid" question. As acting chair of the sculpture department at Yale University, he's not accustomed to having his authority questioned, let alone his integrity. Then he squinted, grinned thoughtfully, and rose to the occasion.

"The casual application of color to a natural form is something I'm very much taken with," he said. "So in a modest way, they can be related to a child applying color to a stone."

The idea came to him last year during his first trip to India. He was struck by the way colorful flags and bright powdered pigments -- saffron, crimson, indigo, pink -- are used in religious rituals and prayer. Inspired by the vivid hues, he sought a way to introduce them into the landscape of contemporary sculpture.

During a visit to Hodges' studio, Walker director Olga Viso spotted his drawings and a little tinfoil model of the sculpture. She's co-curating, with the Dallas Museum of Art, a retrospective of Hodges' work booked to open in Minneapolis in February 2014. She felt the rock sculpture would suit the Walker's hillside -- if it was the right scale to anchor a 4-acre site and if it could be engineered to survive Minnesota's winters.

"He created it with the Walker in mind but we waited until it was finished" before purchasing it, Viso said.

While the piece looks simple, its construction was a challenge for the foundry in upstate New York where it was built. The main problem was how to fasten to the rocks contoured slabs of colorful, highly polished stainless steel that are up to an inch thick. That required making casts of the rocks, carving away the sections to be steel-faced, molding the metal plates, attaching the steel with hidden screws and pins, sealing the edges and polishing the surfaces to new-car gleam.

Finding the right rocks was tricky, too. Hodges wanted natural boulders whose worn surfaces would look timeless.

"I don't want to get in trouble with the boulder people," he said wryly, but after scouting the quarries of St. Cloud he ended up with rocks from western Massachusetts.

The sculpture's apparently casual placement is in keeping with the Walker's evolving ideas about the slope. From June to September the center treats its Open Field as an area where programmed and spontaneous activities happen.

Last week visitors were already strolling among Hodges' boulders as their shiny-steel sides mirrored the sky and showed quavering images of the Walker and the downtown skyline. As the sun set, the panels seemed to toss poetic bouquets of ever-changing light onto the scene.

Touching art is off-limits in the Sculpture Garden, but the boulders naturally invite climbing, of course. Hodges winces at the thought.

"I prefer not," he said. "I mean it is art. But it is an outdoor experience, so what can you do?"