Big Indian Head and Turtle

Parsons, Kansas

Stan Herd is a Kansas artist best known for turning fields of crops into artworks. Since these are naturally temporary (and only visible from the sky), his efforts on the landscape have been underappreciated by the average traveler.

Perhaps with an eye toward leaving a permanent public mark, Herd built two big sculptures out of rocks in a park in Parsons. The first, titled "Ancient Man," is a 13-foot-high head carved with an air chisel out of 45 tons of limestone blocks. Herd completed it in 2016. It took him another four years to assemble his second rock sculpture in the park, "Turtle Island," 32 feet long and 14 feet wide, which references the Native legend that America is actually a mound of earth on the back of a giant turtle.