If you’ve driven along Hopkinton Road, heading away from Concord, you may have caught a glimpse of Andy Moerlein’s work.
You’d have to be paying close attention – though hopefully not when you’re behind the wheel – but trust us, it’s there.
It’s tucked on the left side just as you start to head down the driveway for Mill Brook Gallery & Sculpture Garden, and it seems to defy logic. It looks like a bunch of really heavy boulders sitting in a boat-type creation made out of saplings placed many feet in the air on top of a intertwining collection of what appears to be silver piping.
The piece is called “Suspense,” and judging from our description, you can see why. Although like a lot of art, there’s more than meets the eye. The large rocks are not real and were actually created by Moerlein to look like something you’d see in the middle of the woods – and to be honest, he had us fooled.
And that’s just one in a long line of pieces that have appeared at Mill Brook. He’s been a mainstay in the sculpture garden since the beginning, and if you’ve ever been, you probably will recognize some of his work. “Cursive” was installed last summer and is another mixture of saplings and realistic looking fake rocks – that just so happens to be in the middle of a pond. Moerlein installed it in one day with the help of his trusty assistant, a couple of canoes, some plywood and a ladder.
“Pam (Tarbell) has been inspirational in allowing my risk taking,” Moerlein said of the Mill Brook owner.
“I know whatever he does will be really good,” Tarbell said.
There are also a couple of trees on the property that hold his art work – you guessed it, large boulders that aren’t real. He’s even scoured the property for wood to be a part of his work.
“I’ve picked her acreage for all the saplings,” he said.
It’s not uncommon for Moerlein to install his work wherever it’s showing. A lot of the times, his pieces are site specific – as well as rather large – so he doesn’t have a lot of choice. He enjoys the interaction that it brings. He doesn’t just drop off a piece and then leave; he spends a day, maybe two, working to get it set up.
“I try to set up the pieces all in one day,” Moerlein said.
There are questions from people passing by, like ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘why are you doing that?’ And for Moerlein, it’s just another way to interact with his audience. Some of his pieces are to look at, while others actually invite people to pass through and explore. It all depends on who he’s creating for.
“Almost always they’re site specific or site inspired,” he said. “Story telling really comes into it. I try to put some part of my personal life into my pieces.”
He has displayed work all over New Hampshire, in places like Nashua and Portsmouth, at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Mass. and the Christian Science Museum in Boston, where more of his rocks in trees have appeared. Moerlein also does collaborations with his wife, Donna Dodson, as the Myth Makers.
The large pieces began a long time ago when the Currier Museum (Manchester) asked him to do something fun for their family day. So he thought up an idea and it was a huge hit.
“I wanted to do something that was notable,” Moerlein said.
When Moerlein gets an idea, he usually does a sketch and sometimes a smaller model. You don’t want to start building something that large only to find out it won’t work. And they don’t always work.
“I have a thousand pieces for every three that get made,” he said.
Moerlein also likes to share his knowledge of art with the younger generation, having spent the last 20 years teaching at the Derryfield School before taking a part-time gig at Hampstead Academy for the upcoming year.
So if you haven’t seen any of Moerlein’s work, take the drive out on Hopkinton Road. Just obey the speed limit and pull over if you’re going to take a look.
