By Charley Falkenburg, Special Writer
About two weeks ago, Karen Reilly was out walking her two dogs like any other day. Since her retirement, excursions in the Princeton area have become a welcomed addition to her daily routine and that particular November Saturday was no different.
That afternoon, the trio had opted to do some traveling in Carson Road Woods in Lawrence Township.
Ms. Reilly and her companions were no strangers to Carson Road Woods and knew the paths pretty well. As they made their way down a lesser-traveled trail, Ms. Reilly suddenly came to a halt when she saw a face.
Sitting on a log, in plain view, was a stone about the size of a fist that had a relatively detailed face carved into it.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s a face — and it’s kind of a nice face,’” recalled Ms. Reilly, laughing amid the din of the Starbucks crowd around her. She paused as she leaned back into her chair.
“I rarely see anyone back there so at first I thought someone might have lost it because who comes back there, but wacky me and my dogs?”
She ended up taking the rock face back to her Ewing home where she stuck it on her kitchen windowsill and didn’t think anything of it.
Until three days later.
She and her dogs were out again, this time in the morning at Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, when she found another rock with a face carved into it. This rock was sitting upright atop a fallen wooden telephone pole.
“At first I just thought it was weird that there was a rock sticking out of a telephone pole, but when I picked it up I was like ‘Oh my God, another face,’” said Ms. Reilly, glancing down at the small café table where she had placed the two rocks.
The two were very similar, but clearly different. The larger of the two had a face that resembled a smiling old man with what appeared to be the beginnings of initials etched into the side. The other had lines of hair carved at the top and looked, as Ms. Reilly put it, “very Easter Island.”
Ms. Reilly’s second discovery led her to start questioning whether it was a coincidence or if a local artist was purposely leaving them around.The whole thing reminded her of a fairy door phenomenon in Pennington, where some unknown artist painted small, whimsical doors on a couple of buildings.
She began to wonder if maybe there are others out there, like her, who have stumbled across these types of sculptures.
“They weren’t buried or hidden — someone is clearly leaving them. If there’s two, there has to be more,” she added.“And I would think you would have to be very talented to make these — clearly some kid didn’t do this.”
But it still remains unclear exactly what specific type of art the rock faces are or whether they worth any money.
The Princeton Packet reached out to professionals at the Princeton University Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Rutgers University Art History Department and the Rutgers Zimmerli Art Museum, but none of the experts at those places could pinpoint the specifics of the sculptures by the photo they were provided. At best, a few believed the sculptures to be modern.
Others were able to rule out origins.
Betsey Rosasco, the research curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Princeton University Art Museum, said she didn’t think the sculpted heads were from any period of European sculpture ranging from late medieval through early 20th century. Ms. Rosasco also thought the heads could be caricatures.
Michael Padgett, a curator of ancient art at the Princeton University Art Museum, added that the heads were not from the ancient Mediterranean area either.
Ms. Reilly was unsure, too, and has yet to have the sculptures evaluated. However, that afternoon in Starbucks, the sculptures appeared to be a big hit. with the coffee crowd. Several people passed by the table and complimented Ms. Reilly on her growing collection.Nearby, an older gentleman sat by the window, studying the rocks while sipping his coffee.
“Oh wow, this is something,” said Ernest Brahm of Ewing as Ms. Reilly brought the rocks over to him. “These aren’t native rocks; I’ve never seen these kinds of rocks around here before.”
Like Ms. Reilly, Mr. Brahm also thought the rocks were done by an artist because of the level of detail in each of them.
“These definitely weren’t carved in five minutes,” he added. “They’re amazing — like magic rocks.”
Magic or not, the mystery still remains — and that’s fine for Ms. Reilly, who continues to be on the lookout for more of the sculptures.
“I’d love to know who left them and why, but I’m not going to exhaust myself to find out,” she said. “But it did bring a smile to my face.”
