Barack Obama showed up at his meeting with Dutch PM Mark Rutte with his usual caravan of armored limousines and the like. Here’s how Mr. Rutte got there:
Danish PM Mark Rutte from National Review Online
But… but… the American President needs a huge entourage, of course, To Provide Security.
Stock Xootr Swift – I only added the seat bag and bottle cage (click to enlarge)
He also singles out several “brilliant, well-thought-out, delicious beers” from Dallas breweries: Velvet Hammer, an imperial red ale from Peticolas Brewing Co., Mosaic IPA from Community Beer Co. and Temptress, an imperial milk stout from Lakewood Brewing Co.
The man obviously knows what he’s talking about. Those three… plus Revolver’s Blood and Honey (which, I guess, isn’t really a Dallas beer) are my favorites.
A hearty cheer – for good beer.
The Wisdom of Mark Cuban
I’m not a huge fan of Silicon Valley. It reminds me so much of Hollywood and the movie and TV industry.
In Hollywood every one will talk and listen to you about your project. But while they are standing there, right in front of you, they are not looking at you. They are looking past you to the next project where they can raise/sell more. Where they can be a bigger star. There is always a bigger fish. Who ever is standing in front of them is hopefully just the bait.
Silicon Valley has become the exact same thing these days. No one wants to literally start from scratch in a garage and build something. No one wants to bootstrap a business to profitability. Those are such archaic notions these days.
“I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That’s rule number one of business.”
Take a look at this photo from Googlemaps of an area outside of Boyers, Pa:
Boyers, PA
A huge parking lot out in the country, mostly filled with hundreds of cars. A mysterious road that trails off to an opening in the side of a mountain, leading all those people underground.
What do you think it is? Maybe a top-secret defense facility? An armored center for disaster response? The place where they keep the aliens from Area 51?
I read in a lot of places – car drivers that are hostile to bicyclists because, “They don’t pay gas taxes, so why should they be allowed on our roads.”
As I rode down from the train station all the walkers coming the other way said, “They’re a long ways ahead of you.” All of them, really.
“I’ll catch up, don’t worry,” I replied.
And I did. It was a lot of fun.
Skipping rope at Ye Olden Tymes Vintagey Retro Ride & Picnic. (click to enlarge)
I had a cycling route picked out from the Audubon Center to Paul Quinn College, where the next Nasher XChange installation was located. It involved a trail through the Great Trinity Forest across the Trinity River. I was a little nervous about that – the green lines were clear enough on the Google Maps Cycling Layer, but I wasn’t sure the trails were finished or even if they went exactly where the map said they did. Documentation on trails when they are finished is light and unreliable and I was going to be alone and a long way from home.
…Shouldn’t have worried – the route through the forest was a beautiful ride. New, smooth, level trail, gentle winding, and that feeling that, in only a few feet, you have left a giant city for some remote wooded wilderness. Of my entire ride that day, this is the part I will return to. There are more trails under construction – hopefully there will eventually be a complete complex that can be used for recreation and transportation.
The forest was, of course bare, the sky leaden and gray – but the promise of green spring isn’t very far away. There will be a narrow sliver of time between when the vegetation comes alive yet before the killer summer heat slams home. I’ll have to plan a trip in that window – maybe a picnic somewhere. On this day I had it all to myself and it’s hard to imagine other people down in that isolated forest – but maybe someday.
As I emerged from the trail system onto Simpson Stewart Road I began to see some familiar landmarks. I was surprised at how far south I had ridden. Off to the side was an incongruous mountain rising from the tabletop flat river bottom lands – a treeless smooth, undulating highland beginning to cast a long shadow over the winter afternoon. This is the McCommas Bluff Landfill – a gigantic pile used to dispose of the city’s detritus – a massive hidden cache of flotsam and jetsam.
Then I rode past a building, the city’s Eco Park structure. I had been there several times for meetings or educational events – and had always looked at the abandoned roads stretching out into the floodplain and wondered about riding a bike there. I was surprised to find myself coming the other way.
At that point I arrived back into civilization… and road traffic. There was a nasty steep hill leading up to the entrance to Paul Quinn College and the next stop on the Nasher XChange tour – Vicki Meek’s Black & Blue: Cultural Oasis in the Hills. The exhibition is a series of artworks posted around as signs that illustrate the history of Bishop College – a historic educational institution that sat on the site.
I was exhausted from the hill climb and running late, so I wasn’t able to take the time or energy to find all of the exhibit or to give it proper thrift – but I could feel the history, the promise, and the difficulties that an institution like Bishop College offers or offered and faces or faced.
I still had miles to go, another XChange site to visit – and after that a train station to find and two trains to take home. I was getting tired and slowing down more and more. Nothing to do but keep pedaling.
Vicki Meek, Black & Blue: A Cultural Oasis in the Hills
Vicki Meek, Black & Blue: A Cultural Oasis in the Hills
DALLAS, Texas (August 16, 2013) – The Nasher Sculpture Center is pleased to reveal the plans for a newly commissioned work by artist Vicki Meek that will be located on the campus of Paul Quinn College. The work is one of ten commissions for the Nasher’s 10th anniversary, city-wide exhibition Nasher XChange, which will be on view October 19, 2013 through February 16, 2014.
Entitled Black & Blue, Cultural Oasis in the Hills, Vicki Meek plans to celebrate Bishop College’s role in the intellectual and cultural life of Dallas through a series of historical markers commemorating important people and moments from the college, and which will also include an interactive web component and video interviews. Bishop College was a historically black college founded in Marshall, Texas in 1881 that moved to southern Dallas in 1961 and closed in 1988. The campus is now occupied by Paul Quinn College.
To develop her project, Vicki Meek is working with former Bishop College faculty and alumni, and members of the Highland Hills and Singing Hills neighborhoods around the school. Bishop College played a significant role in the development of academic and cultural life in Dallas, giving birth to important cultural institutions such as the African American Museum and the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.
She describes the motivation behind her work as a desire, “to reclaim African American history, restore our collective memory and illuminate critical issues affecting the Black community through visual communication.”
Meek, a native of Philadelphia, PA, is a nationally-recognized artist residing in Dallas, Texas. Trained as a sculptor, she has focused on installation art for the past 25 years that asks for direct engagement from the viewer in an effort to foster dialogue on often difficult subject matter. Meek’s work is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was awarded three public art commissions with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Art Program and was co-project artist on the largest public art project in Dallas, the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project. In addition, Meek is an independent curator and writes cultural criticism for her blog, Art & Racenotes. Meek is currently the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for National Performance Network.
Inside – Music (Everything I know I learned the day my son was born), Alfredo Jaar, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
I didn’t have to go very far to visit Alfredo Jaar’s Music (Everything I know I learned the day my son was born) at the Nasher. All I had to do was walk across the garden to the structure made of pine and plastic, tinted green. It was newly constructed and the timber still smelled of moist-cut forest. With a raised wooden floor reached by some wooden steps and a row of folding canvas director’s chairs arranged along the walls it was a tranquil, peaceful spot – separated from the din and hustle of the city both by its walls and the insulating layer of the Nasher garden itself.
I sat down and waited… waited to hear something….
Even though I only had to walk a few feet to get to the art the day still counted as a bike ride day – I had ridden the DART rail from Richardson to downtown and ridden over to the Bishop Arts District to meet some folks – and we rode back across the Jefferson Viaduct to the Nasher. It was a beautiful day, even though I had to fight the State Fair crowds on the train.
We were there for a lecture on the Nasher XChange exhibition – ten works of art spread out over the vast expanse of Dallas. As I have said before, the lecturers kept talking about how big and sprawling Dallas was (true, of course) and of the many miles in a car necessary to travel to the sites. This, I knew was not necessarily so – though it took a paradigm shift to understand that it was not only possible, it was fun, to move around the city using only feet, a bicycle, and a DART pass.
After all, I was sitting there in the lecture (sweating a bit) after having traveled from Richardson, to Oak Cliff, and back to downtown without getting in a car.
And I decided to see all ten without firing up an internal combustion engine.
The exhibition was in honor of the Nasher’s tenth anniversary. I could not look at Music (Everything I know I learned the day my son was born) without thinking of the time I came to the Nasher with my own son only a few months after it opened. He posed with some of the sculptures, I wrote it up in my old journal The Daily Epiphany and was able to rewrite it as a magazine article and sold it to Richardson Living. The Nasher sent me some free tickets.
Night (La Nuit) – 2011 (they had moved the sculpture)
Eve, by Rodin, 2004
Eve, by Rodin, 2011
My Curves are Not Mad – Richard Serra, 2004
Richard Serra – My Curves are Not Mad – 2011 Look at how much the trees in the garden have grown.
Now, back to sitting in Alfredo Jaar’s room of wood and green plastic. It is quiet, only the murmur of some folks talking and an occasional foot tread. Sunlight streams in from the open door and the skylights overhead, mixing with the emerald glow from the translucent panels.
Suddenly, there is a sound, recorded and amplified, pouring from unseen speakers. It is an odd sound, almost unearthly. It isn’t really a cry… but it is. It is the recorded first sound of a newborn baby. The exhibit will record the first utterances of newborns in three Dallas hospitals and replay these ever day at the same time they were born. This has only been going on for a short time, so you have to wait for the sounds, but they should grow until mid-February when there will be a cacophony of first cries.
Alfredo Jaar
New York, New York Music (Everything I know I learned the day my son was born)
2001 Flora St.
Nasher Sculpture Center
An installation that celebrates newborns and their limitless futures as Dallas citizens, bringing their voices together in a touching, symphonic experience.
Jaar’s project is inspired by what it means for a museum to celebrate an anniversary: What does it mean to be born, grow and then reflect back on 10 years of life? Most importantly, how can an institution like the Nasher Sculpture Center acknowledge the community it is a part of? Instead of reflecting on important institutional moments, Jaar intends to celebrate the births of newborn citizens and the limitless possibilities of their futures. Inside a pavilion designed by Jaar and located in the Nasher Garden, visitors will hear recordings of the first cries of babies born in Dallas between October 1, 2013 and February 1, 2014.
In collaboration with Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, Methodist Dallas Medical Center and Parkland Health & Hospital System, the sounds of the first moments of life will be recorded and uploaded to the pavilion. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the recordings will be played each day at the precise times of the births and new recordings will be added continuously. The diversity of voices and their intermittent occurrence within the space create an ever-changing musical composition that provides simple yet profound reminders of our city’s continuing growth. For the hundreds of families that choose to become a part of this artwork, the Nasher Sculpture Center will provide special memberships to the museum – a one-year Giacometti Level Membership for the participating families and a first-ever Lifetime Membership for the babies.
I dug around on my hard drive and found the journal entry I wrote on Saturday, May 1, 2004 – about the visit that Lee and I paid to the newly-opened Nasher. Here’s the text of the entry.
The Daily Epiphany
Saturday, May 01, 2004
The Nasher Sculpture Center
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
—-José Ortega y Gasset
Even though it’s been open since last October, I haven’t had the chance to go visit the new Nasher Sculpture Center in downtown Dallas. I wanted to go and I wanted to take Lee. The other day, I asked him if he wanted to see, “The best sculpture in the world.” He replied, “Dad, I sort of like sculpture; those cows and horses in front of the car show we saw downtown, they were really cool.” Still, though I ached to see the place and Lee wanted to go too we are so busy I haven’t been able to put together the time. It costs ten bucks to get in so it’s not a drop by proposition; for that much cash I want to take my time.
This weekend was soccer-full, so I didn’t think we’d be able to make it. All night Friday was full of booming storms, the sky lit up light electric fireworks, the wind blowing bending trees and whipping clouds of water through the neighborhood – real rainout weather. At dawn this morning the phone started ringing with the cancellation news – the games in Arlington, the games in Mesquite, even the games in various spots that Nicholas had agreed to ref (he’s trying to save enough money to buy a portable DVD player) were all called off due to submerged fields. Although the sky was overcast, dreary, and featureless slate gray, the rain stopped by ten and the day, though a bit chilly, was passable and Lee and I took off for the new sculpture center – driving to White Rock and catching the DART train downtown.
I had heard good things about the place but upon walking in and seeing it up close and personal I was totally blown away. It is magnificent.
The building that houses the inside part of the collection is at the north end of the site. It is an incredible construction of light – steel, pale stone, and glass arranged in a series of feathery pavilions full of stunning art. We took a swing through a visiting show of Picasso work, arranged alongside Nasher’s own Picasso pieces. We didn’t stay inside very long (I knew we’d come back and look closer) because, as beautiful as it is, the building’s most stunning function is as a frame for the sculpture garden outside and the allure of that green sward was irresistible.
Lee sitting on Scott Burton’s Schist Furniture Group (Settee with Two Chairs) near the northern end of the garden. In the far background you can see one of the curved pavilions of the main building.
The Nasher Sculpture Center sits right in the heart of the city; at the crossroads of giant busy screaming highways (three different interstates and two state highways cross within a mile of the center), at the feet of clusters of towering glass, stone, and steel office buildings, and with bustling crowds of workers packing the sidewalks and tunnels of a monstrous center of commerce. One rectilinear patch of land is yanked from this ugly knot of hustle and bustle and transformed into a peaceful oasis of three-dimensional art. At first, you don’t even notice the sculptures dotting the lawn. The trees, the grass, bits of stone, pools and sprays of water are art enough. Only after you drink in this unexpected bucolic landscape do you notice the other artwork – the arranged piles of steel, stone, or bronze that are carefully arranged among the rooms marked out by the careful plantings of trees, bamboo, and areas of water.
Lee and I walked around grinning like idiots. It was wonderful.
I liked this spot. To the right is Eve, by Auguste Rodin, the rectangular piece with round holes is Squares with Two Circles (Monolith) by Barbara Hepworth¸ and the copper-gold colored work on the left end of the pool is Working Model for Three Piece No. 3: Vertebrae by Henry Moore. Beyond the green reeds to the right, you can see the dark rectangle which is the entrance to Tending (Blue) – the gray stone on the far right side is the outer wall of the installation of the work itself.
My favorite piece might have been the installation Tending (Blue) by James Turrell. We walked into a little opening lit by odd, shifting colors into the wall at the north end of the garden. The passage made a right turn and opened into a small room lined with dark stone benches. The walls on the upper half were featureless and smooth. A gray skylight lighted the whole chamber. The effect was strange and very peaceful. I liked it a lot.
Lee inside of James Turrell’s Tending (Blue).
Lee and I left the chamber and walked back up the garden and inside the building. We wandered downstairs and into the auditorium where a film was showing. It told the story of Raymond Nasher and his late wife, how they started out building Northpark Mall, acquired a fortune, and then became premiere collectors of modern sculpture. Mr. Nasher talked about his life, his wife, and his passion for the new sculpture center. The film then showed the construction of the center, how a handful of visionary architects and a few thousand men in hard hats converted a grimy downtown parking lot (I’ve parked there many times, put my quarters or dollar bills into a rusty numbered slot) into a thing of great value and beauty. They talked a lot of how it will be there forever. The film was fun and interesting – it really helped me appreciate the place.
On opening day Raymond Nasher said, “I put Patsy (his wife, the collector, who had passed away a couple years before) in charge of the weather today, and, as you can see, it’s beautiful.
One thing was odd, though. On the part of the film that covered opening day, Nasher and Turrell themselves went into the Tending (Blue) chamber that Lee and I had walked out of only minutes before. The benefactor and the artist sat on the benches and looked around. The skylight rectangle in the ceiling wasn’t gray like we saw it, but a deep cerulean blue.
“What’s up with that?” I asked.
“Let’s go back and check it out,” Lee said.
We hiked back down and entered the chamber again. The skylight was still gray. Something didn’t look right, though. I stood under it, looking up, trying to figure out what I was seeing and how it could change colors so dramatically. I was halfway convinced that it was a rectangle of light projected on the ceiling by some hidden apparatus (the upper walls are washed in subtle changing color from hidden computer controlled LED’s) when I was suddenly struck between the eyes with a big, cold drop of water. I wiped my face in surprise and looked down at some small pools of water at my feet.
“That’s weird, Lee,” I said, “I can’t believe it, but this roof is leaking.”
I looked back up, trying to find the telltale discoloration of a water leak, when, with a sudden shock, I realized what the hell I was actually looking at. That wasn’t a skylight, that wasn’t a projected rectangle at all, it was simply a big hole in the ceiling. I was looking directly at the sky. Once my eyes and my brain were in sync I could see the subtle variation of the clouds passing by overhead. The edges of the hole must have been cut back like razors – there was no visible frame around the opening, simply a featureless rectangle of light. It was amazing.
That’s why the rectangle looked blue in the film – it was a cloudless day. Now I want to go back. I want to go at sunset… I want to figure out how to go at dawn. The city sky at night… will it be brown? I want to sit in there during a rainstorm. I especially want to go there on that rarest of Texas days, a snowstorm.
Lee and I wandered around for a long time; we took a bunch of pictures (I have material for quite a few entries from the camera – hope y’all don’t get sick of them) and had, all in all, a wonderful time.
We were looking at a few last pieces up by the entrance, getting ready to leave, when I noticed an older balding man in a tan leather coat come into the building. He was alone and nobody said anything to him as he walked slowly past the desks and into the center itself.
“Lee, look who that is,” I whispered.
“Dad! That’s him!”
It was Raymond Nasher himself – the guy who had built the place, the guy that owned all the sculptures. There was no doubt about it – we had seen several long interviews with him in that film and I was sure who he was. He passed through the Picasso exhibit on into the gallery that held the greatest concentration of smaller sculptures.
I watched as he moved through the displays stopping at a half-dozen pieces. He’d gaze closely at each, intently examining it for a few seconds and then move on. What must be going through his mind? In the film we had seen the men moving the works from Nasher’s private house. These are works of art that have spent years, sometimes decades, in his private home. They must feel so familiar to him… bring back so many memories. Now he has to walk among strangers to view his own prized possessions – the pieces that he and his wife spent their lives finding, the collection they put together together.
I wanted to say hello to him – to thank him, but it didn’t seem right, especially inside where it was so quiet. I decided if he walked outside I’d speak to him but he descended a flight of stairs and went through the glass doors into the private management offices.
Double Glass, by Ray Lichtenstein
I was a wonderful afternoon for me, and I hope for Lee too. I was very glad he went with me. There was a lot of talk in the film how the Nasher Sculpture Center will become a mecca for art lovers all over the world especially when combined with the Dallas Museum of Art right across the street. Now, on the day we were there, there weren’t too many folks – maybe the weather. That was fine for the day; it gave Lee and I a nice chance to see the place at our leisure and not have to fight the crowds. Still, I feel my life is a little better simply for having gone to that place, and I hope you will go there someday too.
dear sunset Ugo Rondinone West Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
When I looked at the Dallas map of the ten Nasher XChange locations, the one that jumped out at me as being in a tough spot to reach without a car was Ugo Rondinone’s dear sunset – a multi-colored pier built out into Fishtrap Lake in far West Dallas. There was no DART station near there, so I started working on a route.
There are some Green line DART stations to the north, but no good way to get across the river. Another idea was to take the train into Downtown Dallas and cross the Trinity River on the Jefferson Viaduct, then ride north and west to Fishtrap Lake. This was doable and I started to plan the details of the route.
But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about an alternate route – a longer route, but one that runs through an area I’ve wanted to explore. I could take the Red Line from Richardson down to the Corinth Station, then head along the Santa Fe Trestle Trail into the river bottoms. A combination of paved bike trails and gravel construction roads would lead me to Hampton Road, and a short ride to Fish Trap Lake. The entire route was six and a half miles one-way, thirteen altogether.
It was a fun ride – the only problem was a strong south wind. There is nothing in the empty river bottoms to stop the wind. Going North I barely had to pedal, but returning South I had to drop down into my low gears and grind it out.
Even with the wind, I enjoyed the ride enough to think about organizing a group ride to return to the lake and the pier. Never was able to pull it off though, the weather took a turn for the worse and I didn’t feel confident bringing other folks down there in the cold.
I’ll go back soon, though. The odd scenery of the wide-open river bottoms surrounded by the crystalline towers of glass skyscrapers is amazing.
You can see the gravel road I rode on in the foreground (click to enlarge)
From the Nasher Website:
Ugo Rondinone
New York, New York dear sunset
3200 Fish Trap Rd.
Fish Trap Lake
A vibrant and colorful pier encourages visitors to reflect and bask in the beauty of the sunset over Fish Trap Lake in West Dallas.
Ugo Rondinone is a New York-based mixed-media artist from Switzerland with an international reputation for a body of work that is endlessly inventive and poetic. For Nasher XChange, Rondinone has designed a wooden pier, finished in vibrant colors, to be installed at Fish Trap Lake in West Dallas. Rondinone, who grew up near a lake in Switzerland, is interested in experiences unique to a pier. He describes how the artwork may encourage poetic, romantic and contemplative moments. The pier will face west so that visitors can experience sunset with the intense colors of the sky reflected on the surface of the water around them.
Fish Trap Lake is a small body of water on a 30-acre site owned by the Dallas Housing Authority, just minutes from downtown Dallas. It is surrounded by several schools, a YMCA, a Girls Inc. of Metropolitan Dallas location, a Dallas Public Library branch, and a senior living community. The site originally was part of La Reunion, a utopian community of French, Belgian and Swiss settlers founded in the 1850s. The lake and adjacent cemetery are named for the fishing technique used by the colony in the nearby Trinity River.
Now that the bicycle photo scavenger hunt for October that Bike Friendly Richardson did is over I wanted to do an entry with my photos and write about the riding. The idea was to ride a bike around the city and take photos of sculptures or fountains with your bike in the picture. There were fourteen sculptures and a map to help you out.
I did all fourteen sculptures (and a bonus) in three rides. It would not have been too hard to ride them all at once – but I didn’t have a whole day. As it was – it was a lot of fun. Quite a few folks did the hunt and posted their photos – pretty cool.
The photos are in the order I took them – the numbers on each description are the ones given on the original scavenger hunt list. These are all hosted on Flickr – click on an image to open up the flickr page.
I had a little time one Saturday Afternoon so I decided to take a quick loop and grab a few sculptures that weren’t too far away. The day was overcast – terrible light for photography… but nice, cool, and windless for bike riding.
4) The Block Cylinder Sculpture – This one is the closest to my house, though it is more isolated from the rest of the sculptures. I rode over there, realized I had forgotten my tripod, then rode home and picked it up. This is an HDR photo made from three shots at different exposures. The day was overcast, the light was terrible.
7) City Hall Fountain – I rode across Highway 75 on Arapaho and was almost hit by someone making a left turn – rushing to avoid an oncoming truck, they didn’t see me. Another HDR image. I tried to take some shots by riding by and hitting the remote release… but that didn’t work very well. Need to work on that technique with a model on a bike and me behind the lens.
1) Humpty FOL Sculpture – Nearby, next to the library – this is the smallest sculpture on the list. It’s a nice peaceful reading area on the north side of the library.
12) Horse Sculpture – Rode down to Beltline to get this photo. The light was bad (still overcast) and the parking lot full of cars… didn’t work too hard – took the photo and took off.
11) Asian Sculptures – After crossing 75 on Beltline into Downtown Richardson, I popped up a couple blocks to get this shot. The DFW ChinaTown center is an old strip shopping area now dedicated to a wonderful selection of Asian Dining Establishments. Everything from Vietnamese Pho, to Ramen, to bargain Sushi, to Dim Sum, to Korean Bar-B-Que and everything in between. They have a whole collection of concrete statuary littering the parking lot. I chose to pose my bike, helmet, and glasses with this guy. I should have gone back with an extra tire and tube and had him pose with a pump in his hand… call it “Fixing a Flat.” I know that sounds disrespectful – but it’s only concrete decorations.
A couple weeks later I took the DART train downtown for a Bonnie and Clyde historical bicycle tour – but the event was rained out. I had my camera, so I rode back to the Galatyn station and rode around, trying to get as many as I could. I would have finished, but the sun set before I grabbed the last three. It was another overcast day, with spitting rain – again, terrible light – but it is what it is.
20.4 mile route (plus another ten miles or so on my trip to downtown)
14) Galatyn Park Fountain – Right off of the DART train is this fountain. Everybody likes this thing. If you look in the background, you can see a train pulling into the station.
9) Critter Garden – Only a little ways north is this familiar group of sculptures – a childrens’ playground along the nature trails that loop through the creek bottom.
6) Palisades Sculpture – I crossed 75 on the trail by the Heights Church, then made my way down to this one. The Palisades Tower piece is one of the sculptures on the list I was not familiar with. I had to lie down in the wet, muddy grass to get this shot – I need to re-do it in brighter light so I can get a little bit better depth of field. Another shot.
5) UTD Sculpture – This sculpture, informally titled “Love Jack” was really hard for me to find. I thought I knew my way around the UTD campus… and I thought that I knew where it was… but I was wrong on both counts. It was fun circling around and around, up and down sidewalks, past all the student and cool buildings – all over the campus for a total of a few miles and well over an hour – but I was getting pretty frustrated and was going to give up when I finally spotted the thing.
10) Silver Tower Sculpture – This was another one I was not familiar with, though I have driven through the nearby intersection hundreds of times. It is set off behind a drug store and a parking lot – hard to see from the road. Cool, though. After I left – even though it had been a long day, it was starting to rain, and I was tired…- I wanted to get the last three sculptures, but the sun was setting so I clicked on my lights and headed home.
Another overcast day, not much light – but not much time left. So I headed out for one last ride to catch the last three sculptures. Ironically, these are the three that I am most familiar with – the ones I ride past the most – and the easiest ones for me to get. Also, I wanted to get one bonus sculpture – one that nobody else had bagged.
13) DART Spring Valley Station Sculpture – I go by this one on my commute to work, but never really looked at it. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
8) Box Sculpture – I found this sculpture a while back and wrote a blog entry about it. I didn’t notice the name “Egri” welded into the steel until now – that confirms that the sculpture is called “Strange Romance” by a late sculptor named Ted Egri from Taos, New Mexico.
Bonus Sculpture – I stumbled across this bronze a while back. It’s hard to find – you will never spot it from the road. But it is definitely in Richardson – but I don’t think I’m ready to say where.
Crazy Fish Sushi and a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings (Click to Enlarge)
It was way too hot. The mercury was rising well past the century mark and the Texas sun was beating down, roasting the world with its searing incandescence – still, I wanted to get out and do a bike ride – get some mobile urban photography done – for fun and fodder for blog entries. I packed up, rode to the station, took the DART train downtown and started wandering around.
The night before I had ridden some similar streets with a lot of other folks – the Critical Mass Dallas last-friday-of-the-month ride. I had a blast. We rode from Main Street Garden Park, through downtown, past the Hyatt Regency and across into Oak Cliff, down to Bishop Arts, and then on to a Cuban-Themed party on a rooftop along Jefferson Street (a few doors down from the Texas Theater).
A lot of cool folks, a good time. We rode back across the Jefferson Street Viaduct bike lane – which was spectacular at night. I’m going to have to repeat some of that ride with a camera and a bit of time.
At any rate – one nice thing about a night ride is the cool air.
By noon the next day – cool air was only found inside.
I locked up my bike in Deep Ellum and started walking around, but the heat was getting to me. I was feeling dizzy and my mind was fuzzing up like an old slice of bread. So I thought about bailing and heading home to flop around in the air conditioning, but I had brought two liters of iced water in the cooler that straps to the back of my commuter bike. I’ve learned that I can take the heat pretty well as long as I keep moving and drink as much cold water as possible.
I drank some water, rode a bit, drank some more, found some shade… and felt a lot better.
A week ago, I had been in Klyde Warren park, killing a few minutes, and had thumbed through a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings that was set out in the reading room in the park. One quote from the book was still rattling around in my head – but I couldn’t remember it exactly and without the exact words couldn’t find it on the Internet. I wanted to use the quotation for a bit of writing/photography. The mystery quote was bothering me like an unscratched itch so I decided to ride back there and take another look at the book.
While I was there I bought a sushi roll from the Crazy Fish Truck (plus more cold water and a diet coke ). Then I was able to get a little green table in some dappled shade and sit down with the paintings and my food and hang.
Oh, I did misremember the quote a little bit. I am happy to set the record straight – but I’m thinking that my misremembered version might be… if not better, more useful for my purposes.
One of the nice things about being a fan of sculpture is that you run into it all the time – if you are able to keep moving and your eyes open.
On a bike ride the other day, I pulled over for a minute to look at a sculpture I spotted in an unexpected place. It was off of Arapaho Road, not far from the DART station – in a stretch of very unartistic industrial buildings.
The Richardson Factory that belonged to General Packaging Corporation had a steel sculpture (probably welded of Cor-Ten) in a grassy spot next to the main entrance. You would never spot this from a car – but it’s obvious from the cockpit of a bicycle. I turned in (it was a holiday and the place was closed) and took a good look.
But, the thing was obviously commissioned for the spot – the factory makes cardboard cartons and wooden boxes – the sculpture was made to commemorate the products.
At any rate – for any reason and by any artist – I liked the thing. I sipped from my water bottle and took a rest before riding on. I tipped my helmet to the folks at General Packaging for spending the money and having the thing built and installed in front of their otherwise nondescript factory. They made my day a little more pleasant… for a few minutes at least.
Bill Chance 