Dinosaurs Just Off the Path

What keeps a dinosaur model from feeling like a display? Here, it is the next bend in the path: each change of setting makes the figures seem newly encountered rather than merely arranged.

First, one at a time

The open park establishes the game, but the woodland changes it. A single model among trees becomes something to come upon, and another waits directly on the path; by the pond, the boundary between sculpture and setting is thinner still. [1] [2] [3] [4]

[1]

dinosaur models in a park setting

[2]

a dinosaur model in a park or forest setting

[3]

a dinosaur model on a woodland path

[4]

a dinosaur model in a park pond

Then the group appears

The view opens onto three figures in the grass, then follows three more along a wooded track. Seen together on the dirt path, they occupy the route rather than its edges; the final wooded display confirms that the landscape is doing as much work as the models. [5] [6] [7] [8]

[5]

three dinosaur statues in a grassy park setting

[6]

three dinosaur sculptures on a woodland path

[7]

three dinosaur models on a dirt path in a park

[8]

dinosaur models in a wooded park setting

What stayed was not one particular dinosaur, but the repeated sight of them where ordinary park scenery should have continued.