Inspiration for new additions to Bill Young’s Daylight Sculpture Garden — an impressive display of green wood art in northern Vanderburgh County — came from distant corners of the world.
The U.S. Army veteran and Vectren Corp. retiree has about 150 sculptures outside that the public can visit, more than double the total he reported when Evansville Living visited in November/December 2022. Another 450 creations are in Young’s home.
Young credits Evansville’s Hoffherr Landscaping for a replica of Stonehenge near Salisbury, England. Hoffherr “does really good work” and has added a totem pole, Young says. He cast a wider net for a likeness of Easter Island stone heads on the Chilean territory in the Pacific Ocean. Its moais were delivered from Texas, but they were carved from green lava stone in Indonesia.
Stonehenge and Easter Island “are two of the most fascinating places in the world,” Young says, and he thinks he has the largest display of moai in the continental U.S. The Easter Island pieces took four months to arrive in Evansville from Texas, and “the two big ones weigh 750 pounds apiece. “They’re not going anywhere.”
Young is a sculptor, too — he’s self-taught and has long enjoyed building and creating vehicles and works of art, including projects with his late grandson, Andy Hupfer, who succumbed in 2021 to COVID-19. Young started the sculpture garden as a tribute, and “I’ve been keeping it going in his memory.”
