Woodbury, Connecticut

Hogpen Hills Farms

A famed data visualizer's personal sculpture garden is a landscape of modern and megalithic wonders.

Yale computer scientist and famed design guru Edward Tufte has long been fascinated by bridging the divide between data visualization both on the page and three dimensions. Hogpen Hill Farms is his personal sculpture garden where he builds his impressionistic sculptures out of mixed media and hard data.

The 284-acre farm that sits across from Tufte’s home is filled with his imaginative and often surprisingly whimsical creations. The ever changing sculpture park features a everything from towering megalith formations to a winnebago mounted to look as though it is a spaceship taking flight. Each of the works transforms the landscape either by recontextualizing part of it, as in the case of the local boulders dredged up for the megalithic standing stones, or by creating a stark contrast as with the angular metal works.

All of the creations in the garden are Tufte’s work which gives the eclectic body of works a sort of design throughline.

Ongoing now is Tufte’s Continuous Silent Megalith Series, for which he has created massive landscapes out of stacked boulders and coniferous trees. Open houses are held for one day a year only on the farm, so consider yourself lucky if you get to see these amazing pieces up close.