SCENE ON THE STREET : Artsy, Ornate and Positively Statuesque

Lawn statuary caters to the suggestible. Put a couple of deer in your front yard, and you’re halfway to Half Dome, inhaling the sage and taking the little caps off the acorns and putting them on again as the tall grass swishes by your knees. A stone lion can carry you from country to country before you’re racing across the tawny plains of Africa. When you leave for work, past the ducky little family on the front steps, the Real World out there seems a little bit cozier. And so it goes. The classic water-bearing boy and the stable boy poised to hold your horse remind you of how it feels to get a little decent service in this world. The flamingo puts you in the Everglades. And in fact, some lawn statuarians can peer at a lawn flamingo, and if they do it for a whole minute without blinking, they can imagine being an alligator. Just their eyes bumping up above the water. Suuuuuure they can. We’ll buy it. Until the, statue of limitations on imagination runs out.