There are colors not found in nature.
And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.
Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Blue
Tag Archives: Dallas
Red
Style changes, style stays the same, style comes full circle.
Car show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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Astral Flower
Astral Flower, by Jose Luis Sanchez, Dallas, Texas
Astral Flower, by Jose Luis Sanchez
There is something special about downtown parks. The tiny bits of public green carved out of the pavement become precious jewels cast about the vast three dimensional expanse of office buildings. The few trees struggling for their share of light and water become alien creatures of wonder – flecks of forest, transplanted.
When I first moved to Dallas in the early 1980’s and was working down in the Kirby Building there was Thanksgiving Square – a carefully created triangle of grass and water in the heart of the business district. One of my favorite things was to eat lunch in the square on a sunny spring day… there was a greasy take out Chinese place in the underground – Mr. Kim’s Eggroll. This was a branch of the better known, almost infamous, Texaco Lunch Box out on Ross avenue. I won’t say the food was good… but it has good memories.
From a 1984 Newspaper Article, in The Victoria Advocate, “In Praise of the Immigrant,” by William Murchison.
My own favorite immigrant is Mr. Kim, a South Korean. He came to Dallas in the late 70’s, legally, I should point out, worked hard at a convenience store, saved most of what he earned and established an eggroll joint across the street from the courthouse. In those days I patronized him with some frequency.
But Mr. Kim wasn’t sure he couldn’t do better elsewhere. A short time later he opened the inimitable Texaco Lunch Box on Ross Avenue. The Lunch Box sells gasoline and marvelous egg rolls, whichever or both. From the start it prospered, owing partly to Mr. Kim’s ebullient, somewhat wacky, personality, partly to a quality product. Mr Kim always had a cheery smile and a few quips for his customers. To my children he commonly would hand out an extra fortune cookie, sometimes even a can of Coke.
One place wasn’t enough, so Mr Kim opened more, staffing them all, as far as I am aware, with fellow Korean immigrants. A devout Presbyterian who plasters Christian slogans on his wall, Mr. Kim also set up bible study classes for Koreans. Many were the times I’d go by the Lunch Box and ask for him, only to be told, “He’s teaching bible class.”
One of Mr. Kim’s outlets is downtown, more or less underneath Thanksgiving Square. That is where I now catch him when he isn’t teaching the bible or helping some Korean family.
I was glad to find that article – I hadn’t thought about Kim’s Eggroll for a long time and was glad to find out my memories (I remember the eccentric man and the religious tracts taped to the wall… as well as the taste of the greasy rolls and sweet sauce) were real and not some remnant of a fever dream.
Kim’s Eggroll and the Texaco Lunch Box are long gone. In addition to some legal adventures, Mr. Kim seems to have been involved in the local restaurants Wok & Roll, which I have eaten at too.
In the decades since, Thanksgiving Square is getting long in the tooth, but the city has carved out some more parks – more ambitious and more contemporary. There is the big trinity of Main Street Garden Park, Belo Garden Park, and of course, the crown jewel, Klyde Warren. There are also a handful of smaller place, some of them really nice, like Lubben Plaza… (I’m going to have to go downtown and shoot some pocket parks… aren’t I).
And there are more in the works.
One of the biggest proposed projects is Pacific Plaza Park. This would join together a number of small parks and desolate parking lots into one of the largest remaining open areas in the City’s Center. It’s been delayed and delayed and I hope they get going and get the thing built while I’m still alive.
One concern, though. Right in the middle of the proposed park, is an old, forgotten park that used to have a fountain with an old, forgotten sculpture. If you live in Dallas, you’ve driven by it a million times, and even though it’s pretty darn big you’ve never seen it. I, however, ride a bicycle, and I notice things like this.
It’s called Astral Flower, by Jose Luis Sanchez. It was placed in the Pacific Plaza “Vest Pocket Park” in 1968 by Junior League Garden Club. The tiny park was developed by the Greater Dallas Board of Realtors along with the City Parks & Recreational Department.
I hope they preserve this little bit of history. In Dallas, history is as scarce as green space downtown.
Astral Flower, by Jose Luis Sanchez
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Banjo Player
When you want genuine music – music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pinfeather pimples on a picked goose – when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
—- Mark Twain
John Pedigo of the O’s. From a photograph taken at The Big Texas Beer Fest, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas.
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They think the banjo can only be happy, but that’s not true.
—-Bela Fleck
Parasol
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There is the umbrella. The umbrella lives under the passenger bucket seat and you pull it out at dawn in the spitting rain and roaring cold wind. Your only hope is that it opens and stays more or less together while you trudge your way across the vast tarmac parking lot at your work. If it does its job, you can arrive breathless and plop down in your soulless cubicle with a few square inches of almost dry clothing.
A parasol, on the other hand, is a completely different thing. Darts of flimsy tissue paper and delicate bamboo ribs – it was not made to stand the power of a howling gale. The gentle rays of the sun are all it can deal with – and barely that. It’s a translucent bumbershoot, a portable shade canopy, standing against the day. Its name tells you that it’s for (para) the sun (sol).
But it’s not only for protection. It’s for twirling.
What better attention grabber than a pretty parasol with hand drawn artistic designs carefully chosen to compliment your tattoos? Ink and ink.
I think of the sweaty hut in some faraway land with workers carefully, quickly, hopelessly putting the things together – cutting the paper, stapling the ribs, or brushing out long-practiced patterns across the delicate field – all the same yet each one different.
And here it comes, spinning down the middle of the street.
And all eyes turn.
Chris Johnson – Patio Sessions
Enjoyed Chris Johnson – of the very popular Fort Worth band, Telegraph Canyon – doing a solo set at the Patio Sessions in the Arts District of Downtown Dallas. One of my favorites, Madison King, opened, but I have plenty of pictures of her… here, here, and here.
You were wearing all black
Face that warned of going back
Turning pages oh you grew
Testifying nothing but the truth
Walking in your righteousness
Shake em’ like you shake your fist
I loved you for getting more
Left you when the night was warm
—-Telegraph Canyon, Shake Your Fist
Chris Johnson, of Telegraph Canyon, at the Patio Sessions, Dallas, Texas
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The winter has shown us
All of the faults
That are hidden well beneath
Hurried shoulders and heavy feet
As sure as we stand
By the body you’ve left
The fastest of hands
And the shortest of breath
You don’t have to hide
Don’t ever have to hide
—-Telegraph Canyon, Welcome to the Night
Chris Johnson, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
when you’re lost and you try to find
someone with a heart beat be a friend of mine
into the woods I’ll stay with you
I found why I came but my plans fell through
—– Telegraph Canyon, Into the Woods
Shiny
Shiny happy people laughing
Meet me in the crowd, people, people
Throw your love around, love me, love me
Take it into town, happy, happy
Put it in the ground where the flowers grow
Gold and silver shine
—-REM, “Shiny Happy People“
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
(Click to Enlarge)
Steel rusts. It’s mostly iron anyway – and iron always desires oxygen, leaving the crumbling brown rust behind. Steel always rusts. When you see something this shiny… and it isn’t plated – look for the polishing marks. Somebody really went after it with a buffer – grinding away the oxidation, the spent, the ruined – leaving the fresh metal to gleam in the sun.
It won’t last. Nothing ever does.
“I like it when she’s shiny, like a star, like a guest on the Donnie and Marie Show.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors
Pinstriping
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”
—- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Pinstriper at work, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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To watch someone do something like this is like watching someone doing magic – real magic. I can’t imagine having the eye, the dexterity, most of all the ability to shut everything out of mind other than the brush, the fender, and the paint. Notice how he has the two colors of paint he is using in daubs on his index finger – he picks up what he needs and brushes it in place. It is completely freehand – no masking tape, no guide lines, not even a design done ahead of time.
Yet the result is perfect. It is smooth, faultless, and symmetrical – even though it is applied to a complex curve on a rusty Volkswagen Beetle fender. The sun was beating down – it was about 104 degrees. It was so hot, I could barely think straight.
“I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life…. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his you th, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the colour-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it”
—- John Singer Sargent
Kids on the Pool
One of my favorite things to do in the city, the Patio Sessions, has started up again. These are small free concerts held on Thursday evenings, in front of the Winspear Opera House in the Arts District. I’ve been to a few of these and written about them before.
The performer sets up at the corner of a large rectangular reflecting pool. The water flows slowly over a field of perfectly level and even black stone – at a depth of maybe a quarter of an inch. The spectators sit on grassy areas, paved sections, or concrete steps around this pool to watch and listen. High overhead, giant aluminum louvers provide some shade from the sun before it falls below. There’s a pop-up bar, food trucks, and a new coffee pavilion. With the surrounding buildings glowing in the setting sun (there are five Pritzker Prize winning architects represented here) it is an amazingly picturesque spot.
The only downside is that expanse of wafer-thin water is a magnet for little kids. Now, I like kids as much as the next guy, but they are noisy and distracting. The pack of rugrats cavorting on the reflecting pool diverts attention from the music. Plus I am bothered by their parents that wander around with that smug, “look at my spawn” half-smile of pride. This would all be cool – except that there is a concert going on.
But, I will admit, they are pretty cute.
Kids on the reflecting pool at the Patio Sessions, Dallas, Texas
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A Place to Gather
I have begun to look everywhere for sculpture and am finding it in unpredictable places. As always, I have a soft spot for artwork that is neglected/forgotten/ignored/abandoned – it becomes an unexpected pleasure. A needed reminder of the fact that art is all around us. We only need to open our eyes.
Near where I work is a campus, Richland College, that I was checking out for outdoor artworks – especially sculpture. I’m familiar with that campus – have been going there for various reasons for decades… and thought I knew everything about its grounds.
But I found a reference to an outdoor sculpture that I knew nothing about. It was called “A Place to Gather” and was done by Linnea Glatt – the sculptor that did “Harrow” in Lubben Plaza downtown (one of my favorites). She also did “A Place to Perform” at the White Rock Bathhouse Cultural Center. I have always enjoyed stopping there on my bike trips around the lake.
What she built at Richland was a small outdoor installation that consisted of a space bounded by two walls, containing a couple of wooden benches. Truly a place to gather.
A photo from The Dallas Art Revue of A Place to Gather when it was first installed.
I had never noticed it. I had a few moments, so I went over there to look for it. I was astounded to find it, overgrown and ignored, between a couple of low earthen ridges in the fields to the east of campus.
There are soccer fields built all around that spot – and I have watched… easily a hundred kid’s soccer games there. Who knows how many times I have walked right by the sculpture, usually hauling a folding chair and a cooler full of drinks for the kids, without ever noticing that it was there. I even remember clearly walking over those little hills in the heat.
The most developed soccer field is right over the little rise to the south – I remember when Nick broke his arm in a game there.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt, with soccer fields nearby
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt. The little benches are still there – it’s a peaceful spot.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt. The weeds are taking over.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt
I enjoyed checking it out. It’s more than a little overgrown now – with some graffiti sprayed on the concrete and some trash starting to accumulate. I’m sure one of the purposes of the work is to let it settle into the landscape but I wish it could get cleaned up a little.
I’d like to go sit there sometime… sit and write, maybe talk to someone. After all, it is a place to gather.
Bill Chance 