Beauty in Nature
Natural elements make the art come alive at the Holmes County Open Air Art Museum at the Inn at Honey Run. It’s open year-round and spectacular to visit during each season to see how the changing climate, like leaves falling, affects pieces like a 90-by-22-foot underwater scene mural.
“If you get a good sunny day and it’s a little windy, the leaves that are on the trees will flicker light where it almost looks like the water is alive and rippling,” says inn proprietor Jason Nies.
Follow a 1.5-mile trail to spot around 10 art installations ranging from a 10-foot totem pole made from found metal objects by former Holmes County artists to a series of five primitive gateways adorned with undulating carvings and woodcuts connected by a circular stone path. The elements add art of their own with picturesque forest, prairie and gently sloping hills surrounding you.
“It walks you up and down hills and shows you
different vistas in addition to the art we’ve created by human hands,” Nies says. “It can be a very spiritual, peaceful time, or it could be just a swift walk and you enjoy a little bit of art.”
Nies shares stories behind a few pieces.
“3 C’s, 2 B’s, at 1 Honey Run”
The inn is a retreat among Ohio’s three C’s — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati — in this piece by retired Columbus educator Scott Ebbrecht that’s made up of 12-by-24-foot panels of reclaimed barn woods that are displayed unchanged. “It’s propagating and keeping the history of these buildings,” says Nies. “They came from all these different farms and different places around the state.”
“Around the Bend”
Three hundred glass discs melted down from recycled wine and liquor bottles from the inn’s restaurant become leaves and a tree trunk in this sculpture inspired by the curves of Northeast Ohio’s hillsides and created by Columbus-area metal artists Brian Sell and Joel Burke and glass artist Jim Lehnert. “You want to catch it at different times of the day because the glass reflects the light,” says Nies.
“Chance Medley”
While Columbus artist Mandi Caskey is known for creating forest scenes, Nies wanted something different. She delivered a massive mixed-media underwater scene mural that features violence with blood in the water. Caskey views it as chaos amongst serenity. While some think it’s too sharp of a contrast, Nies says that’s the beauty of it. “We’re going to excite you and try to give you a different perspective,” he says.
Haiku Walk
Find 30 boulders throughout the trail with original English and Japanese haikus gathered by Julie Warther of the Haiku Society of America and etched into steel plates shaped into ginkgo leaves by local metal sculptors. When it opened as the museum’s first installation in 2015, it was the first haiku trail in the U.S., according to Nies. The haikus take you on a journey through the seasons and have inspired guests to write their own. “One of the last ones talks about warm light in the wintertime. If you’re on the trail, it’s snowing and you’re reading that haiku, you look above the stone, you’re staring at the inn,” Nies says. “We have soft lights, gas lanterns going. It’s the most Norman Rockwell scene — it’s incredible.”