Foamhenge
Today I waived my firm anti-guided-tour policy and joined a band of visual artists from the residency to check out the Natural Bridge caverns, a forty-minute drive from VCCA. It took a while to get inside the caverns, as one artist required hundreds of thumbs from a wax museum gift shop en route, and was trying to bargain down the shopkeeper to sell them in bulk. Then, when we got to the caverns, we were told the tour would start in twenty minutes, which left an egregious amount of time for poking around the gift shop, which offered lots of small, polished rocks and a claw arcade featuring gift certificates to Outback Steakhouse, among other prizes.
The tour itself was led by a plucky, bearded local; skilled at illuminating bats with his flashlight beam and cracking wry jokes about people dying in caves. The cave smelled predictably like a basement. We dutifully craned our necks to check out stalactites and stalagmites, and I wondered what the artists were internalizing about color and texture, while I was still stuck on the people that might have died in the cave. The best part of the tour was when the guide turned off all the lights and we were plunged into a comforting, utter blackness.
I had hoped the tour would mark a new era, in which I began to enjoy guided tours, but it just confirmed what I’ve always believed: they take too long and get in the way of drawing your own cavern inferences. I did appreciate the information about the invisible shrimp living in the cave pond, which I admittedly would not have come up with myself. Back out in the sunlight, we blinked and bundled back into the car. One martyr had to ride in the trunk, which I did not volunteer to do.
Our next stop was Foamhenge, an attraction whose name says it all. The foam pillars are perched on a hillside, and represent a “full-scale replica of the mystical Stonehenge of England.” The entire setup, which was created by the “poor man’s Disney,” Mark Cline, is so absurd that I have a hard time knowing where to begin: the paint flaking off of the Styrofoam, creating a rugged, yet very un-rocklike appearance? The fiberglass sculpture of Merlin, whose face was created from a mold of Cline’s friend, who begged Cline, shortly before he died, to immortalize him through art? The signs posted all over the site, in which Cline warns potential vandals that he might be hiding on the property, ready to scratch their cars, if they attempt to deface his creation? More than anything, Foamhenge is a testament to ambition and vision, even if the result is something that makes you want to lie down for a while.
On the drive back to the residency, in the approaching dusk, most of the artists fell asleep, dreaming, perhaps, of stalactites and styrofoam. I squinted through the gloaming and jotted down colorful street names. The top three are recorded below.
1. Lloyd Tolley Lane
2. Low Bottom Road
3. All American Roadway