In the spring of 1975, I was fortunate enough to join a Student Exchange program sponsored by the Goethe Institute and spend some months in (then) West Germany. I was paired with a German student, Frank Schmidt , and his family and lived with them in a small town outside of Sankt Wendel. I was about to graduate from high school and had been accepted into art school, commencing in the fall, so I was quite excited to explore the art of the region I would be living in.
One of the most memorable places I visited was a large scale public art venue, the Straße der Skulpturen, located on a country road just outside of the city of Sankt Wendel. In 1971 the sculptor Leo Kornbrust initiated this project, creating a landscape populated by huge stone and concrete sculptures. It was like nothing else I had ever seen and though the contemporary work was less than thrilling to my hosts, they put up with me and brought me back there two or three times during my stay to explore and sketch.
