Near the intersection of North Green River Road and Daylight Drive sits a curious collection of smiling faces and fluid figures. Many drivers slow down as they pass by the nearly 70 sculptures decorating Bill Young’s Daylight Sculpture Garden.
Young, a self-taught greenwood artist and collector, crafted most of the abstract, personified sculptures.
“I like creating art that smiles back at me when I’m finished,” he says.
Some sculptures mimic Gatling guns and military equipment representing Young’s service as a U.S. Army field artillery master sergeant. Others are the work of an Oakland City, Indiana, artist and creator of the “Aerial Beauty” sculpture outside Evansville Regional Airport, Bob Zasadny. The most eye-catching of Zasadny’s creations is a six-foot yellow and blue semicolon embodying support for suicide prevention and awareness. The sculpture is a smaller version of the same piece in Princeton, Indiana’s Bicentennial Park.
“We have a lot of visitors,” Young says. “People were even leaving notes in my mailbox, so everything is really going along better than I expected.”
Young started the garden in August 2021 to honor his grandson Andy Hupfer, who died from COVID-19 earlier that month. Young says Hupfer sparked his inspiration for the public art garden.
“He helped a lot with the greenwood art. You have to go out and hunt for crooked wood, and he was very good at helping me hunt the wood and then processing it,” Young says. “After I’d make a piece, he was my critic. I had to make it to his specifications.”
Young stays connected to Hupfer through the garden. More sculptures are coming.
“We’re just getting started,” Young says.
PHOTO BY RILEY GUERZINI
