About Porter Sculpture Park
A few miles off Interstate 90 near Montrose, the prairie suddenly starts growing monsters. Porter Sculpture Park is a field full of enormous welded creatures, skeletal animals, impossible machines, and other metal inventions created by South Dakota artist Wayne Porter. More than sixty sculptures are scattered through the tall grass, many paired with short pieces of poetry written by the artist.
The landmark that announces the place is Porter’s sixty-foot bull head. He built the massive sculpture in two sections and, according to the park’s own history, assembled the pieces without engineering drawings or formal calculations. That approach fits the rest of the park. Porter is self-taught apart from the blacksmithing skills he learned from his father, and many of his sculptures grew from scrap metal, old machinery, and whatever forms suggested themselves to him.
Walking the park feels less like visiting a conventional sculpture garden and more like wandering through somebody else’s extremely productive fever dream. Giant animals stare over the grass. Sharp ribs, oversized jaws, strange faces, and absurdly scaled objects appear against a horizon that would otherwise be almost empty. Visitors are encouraged to walk close to the work, touch it, photograph it, and explore the roughly one-third-mile loop.
Porter Sculpture Park is seasonal, and the artist is often on site during operating months. The setting is part of what makes it work. These pieces would be unusual anywhere, but planted in open South Dakota prairie beneath a huge sky, they look wonderfully out of place.