“It’s up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don’t even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we ‘fail’ to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything–obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows — a colorless, all- color of atheism from which we shrink?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Buddha
Liu Yonggang, Chinese, b. 1964
China, 2013
Painted Steel
Crow Collection of Asian Art
Dallas, Texas
“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Crow Collection of Asian Art
Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
Crow Collection of Asian Art
Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
(click to enlarge)
Downtown Dallas
Texas
What is the plural of ‘Pegasus?’
Mark A. Mandel, linguist (i.e., language scientist and researcher), PhD in linguistics
The original was Greek, but we adopted it in English in the Latin form, ending in -us, not the Greek -os. So we use “pegasi”, not “*pegasoi”. We can and do also use “pegasuses”, as we say “campuses” and “calluses”: Eunji Choi is right about expressions like “the Mickey Mouses of the world”, but that’s not relevant here: “pegasus”, like “atlas” and “medusa”, is proper only in origin.
Pegasi
Downtown Dallas
Texas
Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
May her days be many, her days be few,
The dream of the maiden will never come true.
For the soft wind carried the moment away,
And the birds they sang, but they would not stay
By the meadow gate.
—-Kate Chopin, By The Meadow Gate, last stanza
Again In The Meadow
James Surls
2002, Steel, Paint
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer
One of the nice things about travelling around the… well, around… looking at sculptures is when you find stuff by sculptors you’ve seen before – and especially when you’ve done entries on them.
At the new Hall Sculpture Garden at the side of the new KMPG Plaza Building in the Arts District I found Stainless Internet by George Tobolowsky. His work is scattered around the Metroplex – including two at the Irving Arts Center:
It’s a Slam Dunk
and
Square Deal #2
Take a look at them – compare and contrast.
The Stainless Internet
George Tobolowsky
2015, Stainless Steel
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
The Stainless Internet (Detail)
George Tobolowsky
2015, Stainless Steel
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
“In the squares and in the streets we are placing our work convinced that art must not remain a sanctuary for the idle, a consolation for the weary, and a justification for the lazy. Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts.”
—-Vladimir Tatlin
Tatlin’s Sentinel
John Henry
2001, Painted Yellow Steel
Dallas, Texas
A well-placed large sculpture by John Henry. I like the title – I’ve always been a fan of Tatlin’s Tower – someone should build one of those – a real big-ass version.
Stairway to Heaven
James Suris
Steel, Paint
Arts District, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 