One of the most impressive sights in the Dallas Arboretum is the Magnolia Allee (along with the different, but equally gorgeous, Crape Myrtle Allee). A long, straight, and narrow path runs between two walls of ancient giant Magnolia trees. This year, the fountain at the end is replaced by one of the larger Dale Chihuly works.
It’s something to see, and even more amazing to walk down.
Magnolia Alee
For a larger and higher quality version Visit the Flickr Page
I have an entry half-assed written, but I don’t have time tonight to finish it – have to get another scene on a short story done.
So, into the photo folders… and here are some more photos from the Chihuly Exhibition at the Dallas Arboretum.
Stay thirsty, my friends.
I have been working hard, riding my bicycle every day. I’m out of shape and too big and too old, but still I try.
One helpful thing is that I have done this before. I was a lot younger then, which makes it a lot harder now, but I know it can be done because it has been.
When I first moved to Dallas I was young and full of pee and vinegar, but I began to give in to my slothful and dissipative nature and started eating out too much and lounging around watching too much television. So I fixed my bike up and started to go our riding on a regular basis… at least four times a week. Now there are bicycle trails everywhere, but back then, in the early eighties, there was only one in Dallas, the White Rock Lake Trail. When I started, I lived on Lower Greenville… then I moved a little north to Lover’s Lane and Northwest Highway – and both gave access to White Rock Lake.
I remember the first few times I rode – I couldn’t make it all the way around. This can be problematic, because once you are on the other side of the lake, you have no choice but to ride back. Again, I was young then and the mileage started to increase quickly and before long, around I would go (it’s about nine miles around the lake).
Two memories stand out from those early circuits. Once, I was plugging up an uphill spot when a young woman passed me, standing on her pedals, and shot up the same hill like it wasn’t there. I thought this was the most beautiful thing I had seen – her power, her technique. It wasn’t long though, before I could do the same thing – without even thinking about it. That was a moment of pride.
One problem with riding back then was that it was a nice little downhill jaunt to get to the lake. That meant the last part of my ride, from the lake to my apartment was uphill. I had to be careful and make sure I had enough energy left to get up the hill. One day I miscalculated and had to use up every last bit of willpower I had to get back home. The problem was, I lived in a second story apartment, and there was no way I could make it up the stairs, especially carrying my bike. I had to lie down in the yard, next to my bicycle, for almost an hour, until I was rested enough to trudge up the stairs. I was surprised that nobody came out to see what was wrong with me (not that the people there were helpful – they were very nosy).
So now I’m at it again. The other day I made a list of the rides I wanted to do over my few days off around the fourth, and one was a circumnavigation of White Rock Lake – something I hadn’t done in decades. It brought back a lot of memories, mostly of when I was starting out. I’m riding an inefficient mountain bike, so it is good exercise. I carry plenty of water and my Kindle, and stop whenever I feel like it to read a few pages.
That’s a good time for me. Riding my bike in a nice spot, with memories flooding back, and stopping in bits of shade now and then… reading a bit, riding a bit. It doesn’t get much better than that.
My old Raleigh is hanging out in the garage. Maybe I’ll work on it, see if I can bring it back to life. It’s old, but it’s light and might still go faster and easier than my mountain bike. We’ll see.
I may be old, but I’ve done it before.
Where I started. I think this is the “runners’ lot” – the “cyclists’ lot” is a bit farther down the road. So sue me.
Near the north end of the lake there is a long pedestrian/bike bridge they built to get across an arm of the lake. Back in the day we had to ride on a narrow sidewalk along Mockingbird Lane – a very busy road. If someone was coming the other way… you could pass, but with no more than an inch to spare. It was frightening.
I stopped and visited with the folks at White Rock Paddle Company. I think I’ll go back there soon and rent a canoe. There’s some swampy backwaters I want to explore. It looks like fun.
The old art-deco bath house is now the Bath House Cultural Center and it has a nice sculpture and butterfly garden out front. It’s one of my favorite spots around the lake so I stopped there and read a couple short stories on my Kindle.
A view of the dam across the lake with the towers of Downtown Dallas poking up in the background.
The trail runs between the lake and the Dallas Arboretum. Here’s a bit of Chihuly visible through the trees. That sculpture is about thirty feet tall and is called “Yellow Icicle Tower.” I took a picture of it at night here.
This bench is one of my favorite spots on the West side of the lake. It’s a quiet shady spot. I remember sitting here years ago, taking it easy, though the area looked different back then. The plaque on the bench said that it was dedicated in 1998, so I must have sat there when it was new. These benches have bicycle racks built in to them, a very useful design.
When I walked around the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Arboretum… here, here, here, here, here, here, and here – I heard one questions several times. People asked, “What happens when it hails.”
This is Texas, and they don’t say “if” it hails, they say, “when.” Even the Arboretum literature addresses that. It said that the glass is tougher than you think, and that Chihuly has capacity standing by to replace anything that breaks. When it hails.
Well, it hailed. It looks like the only damange is to the white blossoms in the Persian garden pool, the ones I saw the second time I visited the exhibition. They said the works will be replaced and the rest of the glass is unscathed.
The Chihuly glass in the Persian Garden Pool that was damaged by hail at the Dallas Arboretum. This photo was taken before the storm.
For those of you from places where the weather isn’t quite so… Texas-like, here’s some homespun video of what we live with here. All from Thursday afternoon.
From the article:
Piano says that because the Nasher is a privately held collection, it is free to leave its Flora Street museum and go elsewhere — although he noted that this is not something the Nasher family wants to do, that it was the dream of founder Raymond Nasher to put his collection in the Dallas Arts District at that location. Were Nasher alive today, Piano says, he would “mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.”
I agree, I think the Nasher is playing way too nice with this. If it were my collection I would be in talks with, say New York City and see if the colection could be relocated to… maybe a nice site in Central Park. They would leap at the chance. I know the city of Dallas would be hurt by the move, but to make it up they could use the Nasher site for low income housing and maybe a homeless shelter. I’m sure the Museum Tower next door would enjoy that.
The Museum Tower Condominiums tower over Tony Cragg’s “Lost in Thought”
Finally, a Dallas Food Truck Park. Coming soon. Faster, please.
From the article:
For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls like the one Bentivolio looks at with such fondness. In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, …, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value.
An interesting article, but one that, for me at least, is ultimately useless. You might as well send a heroin addict an piece of paper listing the inconvieniences of shooting up.
Oh, good! Now I can carry Gravity’s Rainbow around on my Kindle.
Swedish Edition of Gravity’s Rainbow
I’ve discovered that one of my favorite cult bands, My Favorite, is now The Secret History… with the same quirky feel. Good stuff.
A Seven-Song Primer On Michael Grace Jr., New York’s New Wave Cult Hero
What’s going on this weekend?
Well, on Friday, there’s the Arts District Summer Block Party. These are always a lot of fun. I might do Late Night at the DMA. The Nasher has been showing kid’s movies on an inflatable screen in the garden, but this week it’s 500 Days of Summer. I’m getting a little tired of Zooey Deshanel’s Goofy Quirky Zany Adorkable Hipster Doofus persona… but still…
Then, on Saturday, the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market is growing and ecompassing Filipino Fest – which sounds like fun.
Sunday? Don’t know yet… but I feel like maybe some Oak Cliff…. Maybe some Bar Belmont. Oh, Shakespeare in the Park is starting up with Twelfth Night.
Any other ideas?
It’s been a bad year for great musicians.
RIP Eduard Khil
I had been reading that the recommendation was to see the Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum at least twice – once during the day and once at night. I was happy when Candy and I were able to go to the concert in the evening – I’d get to see it at night.
During the band’s second set I sneaked away (I could hear “Sympathy for the Devil” filtering through the greenery) as the sun dipped below the far shore of White Rock Lake. During the crepuscular “magic hour” the lit glass seemed to jump out of the landscape. It was a lot easier to find the Chihuly glass amongst the maze of gardens because they were colorful and glowing as if lit from within (everything actually had spotlights trained on them… but the translucent glass appeared incandescent).
I walked around and then returned in the darkness for the end of the concert. Then many folks headed out to stumble around and marvel at the sculptures in the dark. It was magical. Probably the most entertaining (and crowded) spot was the infinity pool in A Woman’s Garden with the two glass-filled boats. The night was dead calm and the water was a horizontal mirror.
Finally the staff came out in golf carts and powerful lights and herded everyone off the grounds. I now have my little membership card so I can go again… and again.
As the sun set the sculptures began to glow. This one is one of the largest (about 20 feet tall) and most dramatic works… called “The Sun.” When I first saw it, I thought it was all yellow and red glass, but some kids were looking closer and you can see that there are actually many colors in there.
The boat on the infinity pool. This is taken from the steps that lead down below the water leve.
Red glass shapes with the dramatic Icicle Tower in the distance. The open grassy areas became haunting, lined with the glowing glass.
The thirty foot tall Icicle Tower was even more dramatic at night.
The boat on the infinity pool, taken from the other side.
It’s been almost a month since I went with my Writing Group down to the Arboretum to take some photographs of the Dale Chihuly exhibition there. I know I have posted a lot about this, put up a lot of pictures, but I’m not done yet, not by a long shot.
For father’s day, Candy bought me a year-long membership to the Dallas Arboretum – so I can go as often as I want, sit around, and maybe stare at strangers. We were talking the other day when we had gone to the Zoo to see A Hard Night’s Day – a Beatles Tribute Band – about the fact that there weren’t any Rolling Stones tribute bands. So she also bought tickets to a concert at the Arboretum by Satisfaction… a Stones tribute band.
The Dallas Arboretum is massive and maze-like. When we were there, I wondered if we had missed any of Chihuly’s stuff. In the interim, I was able to learn the layout a bit better and I slipped away from the concert several times to walk the grounds, both in the evening light and the darkness (nighttime Chihluly photographs to come).
It turns out we did pretty well, only missing one Chihuly piece. It was a beautiful one though. In the second phase of the Woman’s Garden there is a little pond full of water plants (the Pool in the Genesis Garden). The artist had placed some white glass sculptures in amongst the green lily pads and colorful blooms.
It was gorgeous.
Taking a quick look through the directory full of photos I took the other week at the Chihuly Exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum I found a few (well, a lot, actually) that I liked that I hadn’t put up yet.
One group was some gorgeous blue glass that was set in the waters of the Palmer Fern Dell near the entrance to the Arboretum. This is a cool, shady spot that is a great escape from the killer Texas summer sun. The ferns are misted periodically from an automated system set on a timer and the rising fog gives the dell an otherworldly aura.
-Especially with that amazing glass sticking up through the mist.
Sometime, somewhere, somehow, while perusing the ‘net on a day when, though I don’t remember the details, I most certainly should have been doing something more worthwhile, I came across some sort of magazine article or web page that was extolling the delicious risk of eating fiddlehead ferns. I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but there’s a lot out there… here’s a quick sample for reference purposes:
It is always tempting to put out a link to the Wikipedia entry on Fiddlehead Ferns. Except… how useless – everyone knows how to look something up on Wikipedia. To me, that reminds me of my childhood, when everyone would start their school essays with the phrase, “Webster defines (insert subject here) as (insert dictionary definition here). How lazy can you get? It was especially common with oral reports. If you had five minutes to kill, you could get a good forty seven seconds out of the way with ol’ Webster. I always wanted to start a report with, “Webster defines cunnilingus as (insert definition here) – which has nothing to do with my report on the petroleum industry in Venezuela. Ooops, I’m getting off-subject here. The Wikipedia Definition of Fiddlehead Fern.
The unwritten ethic among fiddlehead foragers is to take three violin tops. A fern produces five to nine fronds per growing season, so harvesting more than three can jeopardize the plant’s survival. Found Food | Fiddlehead Ferns
Think of fiddlehead ferns, those tightly coiled, emerald-green symbols of spring, as ferns interrupted. Fiddlehead-Fern Bruschetta
The ostrich fern is the safest fern to eat, even though it, too, can contain toxins. The fiddleheads of cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea), lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina), and bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) can also be eaten, but all are at least mildly toxic and can cause nausea, dizziness, and headache, so it’s probably best to avoid them. Fiddlehead facts
When the Spiceman is in, you can buy a fistful of exotic Tokyo longs to dazzle the pants off your in-laws (or maybe just your spouse). Best Fiddlehead Fern Finder: Tom “Spiceman” Spicer of F.M. 1410
Fiddleheads have a bright, earthy flavor that calls to mind asparagus, artichokes, and green beans. Fiddlehead Ferns
It fascinated me for a good three minutes. The idea of eating foraged food is cool – the idea of eating foraged food that is toxic if not gathered or prepared properly is even more cool. I could almost taste the slight bitterness and feel the crunchy texture of the boiled coils.
After these slight impressions collected somewhere in my useless mess of gray matter I was on to other tasks, probably working on remembering things like where did I leave my car keys and what is my bank account pin number.
My thoughts on fiddlehead ferndom lay dormant somewhere in there until I was walking around the Dallas Arboretum with my writing group taking photographs of the Chihuly exhibition when I overheard a woman talking. She was staring intently at a guide to the exhibit which I had neglected to obtain at the entrance. She was rattling off the names and locations of the colorful glass sculptures and I heard her say, “It says here he did some sculptures called Fiddleheads but I haven’t seen them yet.”
And that set off the memories. The rest of the day I couldn’t help but keep my eye out for some glass fiddlehead ferns. Finally, in the last garden at the end of all things, there were the fiddleheads sticking up amongst the greenery.
Now I can die in peace.
Fiddlehead fern fiddleheads
In case you think I’m full of shit when I write this stuff, here’s the woman I overheard asking about the fiddleheads. This was taken an hour later, and you can see, she is still looking at her guide book. She is now so tired of looking at it that she has her husband holding it for her. Or maybe that’s her husband on the other side and that’s her pool boy holding the guidebook. Or maybe the three aren’t related at all – maybe they are three technical writers that get together on the weekends to go various place and critique the guidebooks.
a Chihuly Fiddlehead
The glass ferns were growing in a bed of greenery.
A fly enjoying the Chihuly Sculpture. I bet he didn’t have to pay to get in.
More photographs from my writing group’s trip to see Dale Chihuly’s work in the Dallas Arboretum.
One of the many cool things about the installation is that you never knew when you would turn a corner and run into something unexpected. The artist placed large turquoise colored irregular blocks of glass in a rock creek that ran through the gardens. Water ran past the glass and tumbled down the artificial watercourse towards the lake. The glass looked like huge blocks of translucent ice – unexpected and beautiful.
The most powerful and ethereal beauty is that which is a surprise.
I remember when I first went to the Dallas Arboretum a couple decades ago – one place that I enjoyed and remember was a double row of Crepe Myrtle trees with a walkway running between. Now, after all this time, the trees have grown together overhead, forming a long, dark, mysterious tunnel.
During my writing group’s trip to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit I set up my tripod in the Crepe Myrtle Allee with my camera facing the Dallas Star sculpture down at the end. Here are a couple of HDR three-exposure shots I came up with.
For a larger and more detailed version of this photo – go to the Flickr Page
For a larger and more detailed version of this photo – Go to the Flickr Page
Bill Chance 