By Scott Brinton
Perhaps it was the slant of the sun on this July 4 afternoon, or maybe it was the statue’s shimmering metallic sheen, or both, but one piece in the Seward Johnson exhibit now on display at Old Westbury Gardens — of a guitarist strumming away by a lake in the forest, titled “My Dog Has Fleas” — took on an ethereal quality, as if it were an apparition.
One could be forgiven for imagining you were seeing ghosts in this outdoor sculpture show. Johnson’s bronze statues of seemingly ordinary people engaging in everyday activities, such as reading a chemistry textbook or flying a kite, are so full of life-like detail that they at once appear alive, yet frozen in place, as if cryogenically preserved.
The show, “Revisiting the Familiar: Seward Johnson at the Gardens,” opened June 18 and will run through Sept. 5. It reprises Johnson’s 2017 exhibit at Old Westbury.
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