"Sculpture On The Grounds" celebrates its 24th season with six artists displaying their sculptures at the entrance to Rockville Civic Center Park.

The pieces are easy to spot when heading into the 123-acre wooded park that also houses Glenview Mansion and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre. Viewing the sculptures can be a quick drive-through experience, whether it's looking up at the beaming smiley face titled "Happy Daze" or observing an abstracted "Giant Fern" on the park's verdant hillside.

With no designated theme, the four jurors, all members of the City of Rockville Cultural Arts Commission, chose abstracted pieces from 12 artists submitting 24 submissions. And each of these artists has a story to tell.

Once upon a time, sculptor Irma Spencer, creator of "Happy Daze," was terribly serious about her abstracted stone sculptures. But she noticed that viewers had immediate reactions to her work.

"Some people like it and some people don't," she says.

Eventually, as she started using found objects into her art, the Potomac resident noted that folks were taking more time to examine her work.

"They were asking how it was made and wondering how the individual parts were originally designed to be used," Spencer says.

This interest encouraged the artist to continue in this vein and look around her house for objects. For example, she reused the small wooden crates in which she bought Clementine oranges. Spencer also perused the Montgomery County scrap metal yard, picking up castoffs and incorporating them into her sculptures. In fact, that is where she acquired the 56-inch disc that would become the smiley face of "Happy Daze."

The smile took some time to create. Spencer polished the aluminum disc and for many months, just let it be. Then she painted the disc a bright yellow and started adding dyed purple hemp inside its scattered multiple holes. It evolved into a face that she says "speaks to me, and makes me smile."

Like Spencer's smiley face, Bill Wood's "Doorways and Roadways" is whimsical and one of the outdoor show's most visible sculptures. Perched on a slight incline at the entrance to the park, the piece's two-lane highway, with its bright yellow center stripe, travels up through a framed doorway that takes the viewer's eye upward toward the woodlands in the distance.

"I've always been interested in doors that are ajar and what is behind them," the Arlington, Va., resident explains.

After traveling I-95 to Florida — where he installed a mirrored sculpture in a Key West park — he says he couldn't resist creating his version of the never-ending highway "where there may be something better down the road."

For years, the sculptor ran his own construction company. Although creating art was always his dream, Wood felt it wasn't possible to "hold down a job and make good art."

Upon Wood's 2001 retirement, he began exploring all forms of metal, which he says is "a malleable material — if you have enough heat."

When not finding inspiration on the highway, the artist likes to "confuse and confound" viewers with mirrored sculptures that reflect the existing landscapes.

Commercial designs are often the source of Don Herman's artistic inspiration. His recent muse came in the form of a contemporary cookbook holder on a kitchen counter. From this design, he created "Giant Fern."

When making sculptures, Herman always starts on a small scale. Then he "triples the size," which he admits can be problematic when a steel ball expands from six to 24 inches in diameter.

The sculptor estimates the weight of the graceful "Giant Fern" at between 300 and 400 pounds. Transporting it to the park took multiple trips.

"It came in 13 pieces and it took me five hours to assemble," at the Civic Center Park, says the Potomac resident who was a furniture maker for years before switching to sculpture.

Both Spencer and Herman regularly take sculpture classes from Professor Orest Poliszczuk at Montgomery College-Rockville.

"I've always liked tools," and Montgomery College's art studios are full of them," Herman says.

Best of all, he points out, Poliszczuk offers "personal critiques and encouragement, and I learned that aluminum tears and doesn't easily bend and the rules of working with wood and steel are different."

John Mors of Arlington, Va., is obsessed with buildings and history. His work "Sir Ned of the Southern Cross" depicts a 12th century armored chessman and the Australian folk hero Ned Kelly. Trained as an architect in his native Australia, Mors' goal is to "interconnect both personal and obscure references" in his metal sculpture.

As for "Sir Ned," there is an "ambiguity to the sculpture: Is he the crazy folk hero running out of the woods or a knight ready for battle?" Mors explains.

There is no battle at Rockville Civic Center Park. "Sculpture On The Grounds" is all about peace and quiet.

"Sculpture On The Grounds" is on view from dawn to dusk at Rockville Civic Center Park, 603 Edmonston Drive. Admission is free. Call 240-314-8681.