“Each time I see the Upside-Down Man
Standing in the water,
I look at him and start to laugh,
Although I shouldn’t oughtter.
For maybe in another world
Another time
Another town,
Maybe HE is right side up
And I am upside down”
—-Shel Silverstein
Reflecting Pool, Winspear Opera House, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
“If your reduce sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (…) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception.”
― Richard Serra
Hall Texas Sculpture Walk with the Wyly Theater, Dallas Arts District
Mosaic – Sonia King – VisionShift
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality
Reflection ‘Series XI
Deborah Ballard
2011, Cast Stone, Mixed Media
Hall Collection
Dallas, Texas
“To preserve the silence within–amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens–no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.”
― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
Paths
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
Cast Aluminum
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
“They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else’s path and you are not on the adventure.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work
Paths
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
Arts District
Dallas, Texas
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
—-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven
Arts District,
Dallas, Texas
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
—-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven
What have the watchmen of the world’s edge come tonight to look for? Deepening on now, monumental beings stoical, on toward slag, toward ash the colour the night will stabilize at, tonight… what is there grandiose enough to witness?
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Wyly Theater and rebar from the demolition of a parking garage
Dallas Arts District
Dallas, Texas
Construction and Destruction
On of my favorite things is the reflective pool in front of the Winspear Opera House in the Dallas Arts District.
I’ve taken a lot of photos there… Like this one, or this one, or this one. This might be my favorite.
For some reason, it has been dry for quite some time. Finally, late this summer, a thin layer of water has reappeared. I went down for another free concert – but was tired and only attracted to some stray birds bathing in the liquid.
Dallas Arts District
Dallas, Texas
Dallas Arts District
Dallas, Texas
Fountain, Flora Street, between the DMA, Nasher, and Crow – Arts District, Dallas, Texas
Sharp or Blurred?
Sometimes the truth is seen in clarity – sometimes in a blur.
—-From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee, Armando Vitalis
Bill Chance 