dear sunset, Nasher XChange, Entry six of Ten

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Bill Chance

Previously in the Nasher XChange series:

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.

The city has big plans for the Trinity – though it is taking decades longer than promised. Still, there’s some new work that looks like it’s about ready. I’ll be there.

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.

Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Buried House, Nasher XChange, Entry Five of Ten

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Bill Chance

Previously in the Nasher XChange series:

Lara Almarcegui
Buried House
2226 Exeter Ave.
Oak Cliff Gardens

I began to feel old, out of shape, and drained as I worked my way north from Paul Quinn College to the third and final Nasher XChange exhibition on my bike ride through South Dallas. It was only a 12.5 mile ride – but these were tough miles. The last half of the route was hilly, the road was rough, and I had to stop every block, fighting my way through the traffic.

But once I rode up to Lara Almarcegui’s Buried House, I realized that here, more than any of the other sites, really begged to be seen by bicycle. I simply can’t imagine what it would be like to drive up to the now-vacant lot in an SUV, step out for a minute or two, then pile back in and drive home. It wouldn’t be the same… you would miss the point.

The work is meaningless without experiencing the surrounding neighborhood.

It is a tough part of town. The streets and sidewalks are in bad repair, cracked and heaving. Trash pickup is spotty at best. The modest homes are a varied melange – a torn up shack here, a burned hulk there, but there are also well-cared, decorated homes that are obviously a great source of pride to an unassuming owner.

And there were plenty of other vacant lots – most littered with junk and sprinkled with empty bottles.

You don’t see the details from a car… but you do from a tired, slow-moving bicycle.

Ironically, this is the second blog entry this February where I found myself taking a photo of a vacant lot. The other one, Arcady, was in the most tony enclave of Highland Park. That neighborhood is the polar opposite of the rugged Oak Cliff Gardens district where Buried House is located.

Destruction, renewal, the inevitable ultimate victory of chaos and entropy… rich and poor, our fate is already written.

After I left the site I had a a short ride on neighborhood streets until I reached the DART Kiest Station and after a short wait, caught the Blue Line downtown, where I switched to the Red line to Richardson and home.

Lara Almarcegui
Buried House

From the Nasher Website:

Buried House
2226 Exeter Ave.
Oak Cliff Gardens

The buried remains of a house offer an opportunity for reflection on the transition
and rebirth of one of Dallas’s oldest neighborhoods: Oak Cliff Gardens.
Almarcegui’s project for Nasher XChange, entitled Buried House, involves working with Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity on a house in Southeast Dallas already slated for demolition. After the demolition is finished, the artist will bury the house’s remains on the property, creating a sort of memorial site that nonetheless retains the building’s actual substance and provides a “free space” for reflection on the neighborhood’s past, present and future.

Almarcegui is working in Oak Cliff Gardens, a neighborhood in East Oak Cliff, with a history almost as old as Dallas itself. Near the site of the first stop for stagecoaches headed out of Dallas for Central Texas, the area surrounding the intersection at Lancaster and Ann Arbor roads became the small town of Lisbon, which was in turn annexed by the city in 1929.

Today, Oak Cliff Gardens is a neighborhood in transition. Many derelict, often vacant, homes will undergo renovations, thanks to the help of organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. These “wastelands” in the neighborhood embody a significant historical moment of possibility when anything might happen. Almarcegui hopes to draw attention to this area and make people in Dallas aware of its rich and varied character, before it is changed forever.

From Google Maps Streetview – what the house looked like before the demolition.

Lara Almarcegui
Buried House

Label Text:

Lara Almarcegui
Buried House, 2013
Demolished and buried house

Born in Spain and based in The Netherlands, Lara Almarcegui brings attention to places most people pass without noticing, such as derelict, abandoned buildings and seemingly vacant plots of land.
Working in environments and places in the midst of transformation, Almarcegui researches and documents them, developing unconventional and creative ways of drawing attention to them. As her contribution to Nasher XChange, Almarceguui has worked with Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity to locate a house already slated for demolition. After the demolition, she buried the house’s remains on the property. As the artist has explained, “This project is a sculptural work that is about the construction that used to stand, the history of the house and how it was erected. However it’s not just about the house, but about the past of the terrain and the future of the terrain. It is a work about construction and urban development.”

Ad Astra

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Bill Chance

Northpark Center, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Mark di Suvero
Ad Astra, 2005
Painted Steel
48 x 25 feet

Other works by di Suvero in the Dallas area – Proverb and Ave

Pamela Nelson and Robert A. Wilson
Color Equations, 2007
4′ x4′ Placards (aluminum with glossy vinyl Surface

I took the train to the Park Lane station and walked across Central Expressway to Northpark Center to look at one of the Nasher Xchange sculptures there. To walk to Northpark is a subversive act in itself. It is the epitome of car culture, of consumer culture, of upper crust shopping culture.

I felt like I was an alien, a barbarian spy infiltrating a pecunious fortress.

Of course Northpark is more than a mere shopping experience. It is the heart of Raymond Nasher’s real estate empire and the main source of the funds he used to build his incredible collection of sculpture and his museums, including Dallas’s Nasher Sculpture Center. There are some incredible artworks installed in the mall.

So I had to walk around and look at them. It is a very odd and unique setting for some amazing art. To be there looking at sculpture and not toting little bags with designer names or logos on them…. it was surreal.

Ad Astra, Mark di Suvero
Northpark Center
Dallas, Texas

Ad Astra, Mark di Suvero
Northpark Center
Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

The Forest

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Bill Chance

David Smith, The Forest, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

The Forest, David Smith
(click to enlarge)

From The Estate of David Smith – David Smith’s Statements

The Question—What is Your Hope

Original version, Smith notebook 28 (c. 1940s) final version c. 1950

I would like to make sculpture that would rise from
water and tower in the air–
that carried conviction and vision that had not
existed before
that rose from a natural pool of clear water
to sandy shores with rocks and plants
that men could view as natural without reverence or awe
but to whom such things were natural because they were
statements of peaceful pursuit–and joined in the
phenomenon of life
Emerging from unpolluted water at which men could bathe
and animals drink–that
harboured fish and clams and all things natural to it
I don’t want to repeat the accepted fact,
moralize or praise the past or sell a product
I want sculpture to show the wonder of man, that flowing water,
rocks, clouds, vegetation, have for the man in peace who
glories in existence
this sculpture will not be the mystical abode
of power of wealth of religion
Its existence will be its statement
It will not be a scorned ornament on a money changer’s temple
or a house of fear
It will not be a tower of elevators and plumbing with every
room rented, deductions, taxes, allowing for depreciation
amortization yielding a percentage in dividends
It will say that in peace we have time
that a man has vision, has been fed, has worked
it will not incite greed or war
That hands and minds and tools and material made a symbol
to the elevation of vision
It will not be a pyramid to hide a royal corpse from pillage
It has no roof to be supported by burdened maidens
It has no bells to beat the heads of sinners
or clap the traps of hypocrites, no benediction
falls from its lights, no fears from its shadow
this vision cannot be of a single mind– a single concept,
it is a small tooth in the gear of man,
it was the wish incision in a cave,
the devotion of a stone hewer at Memphis
the hope of a Congo hunter
It may be a sculpture to hold in the hand
that will not seek to outdo by bulky grandeur
which to each man, one at a time, offers a marvel of
close communion, a symbol which answers to the holder’s vision,
correlates the forms of woman and nature, stimulates the
recall sense of pleasurable emotion, that momentarily
rewards for the battle of being

Data Flow

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Bill Chance

Some more photos I have from the amazing Dallas Aurora.

On Flora Street in front of the Nasher was a stunning, fun, and very popular installation/sculpture called Data Flow. It was made by Erik Glissmann, Scott Horn, and Nicole Cullum Horn. It was a walk-through complex of v-shaped troughs, fed by a constant flow of florescent yellow liquid and brightly lit by ultraviolet lights.

The artists describe the artwork as:

“Data Flow” reflects on the expansion of human consciousness in the digital era. For most of our history, our experiences have been limited to our immediate horizons, securing our sense of the world and our place in it. Digital technology has transformed that stability, shattering and expanding it a thousandfold – like a river divided by a thousand tiny waterfalls. Data Flow physically interprets this phenomenon; a single stream falls onto many planes, reaching its destination by a seemingly random multitude of paths.

My Curves Are Not Mad

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Bill Chance

The vertical is in my spirit. It helps me to define precisely the direction of lines, and in quick sketches I never indicate a curve, that of a branch in landscape for example, without being aware of its relationship to the vertical.
My curves are not mad.

La verticale est dans mon esprit. Elle m’aide à préciser la direction des lignes, et dans mes dessins rapides je n’indique pas une courbe, par exemple, celle d’une branche dans un paysage, sans avoir conscience de son rapport avec la verticale.
Mes courbes ne sont pas folles.
—-Henri Matisse from Jazz

Boy looking at his shadow on Richard Serra’s My Curves Are Not Mad – Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

Walking around Nasher garden, I spotted this child walking up to Richard Serra’s massive Cor-Ten walk-through sculpture, My Curves Are Not Mad – he stopped and stared at his shadow on the steel. I barely had time to raise my camera and squeeze off this shot.

Earlier in the day, we had listened to a discussion of public art and the way it relates to the current Nasher Xchange exhibition that is taking place in various public locations all over the city of Dallas. A lot of the discussion touched on the controversy over Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc and how the public’s attitude toward public sculpture has changed in the time since that disaster. It was a very interesting discussion.

Everybody seems to like My Curves Are Not Mad – but then again, it wasn’t installed by the government.

And certainly the history of public sculpture has been disastrous but that doesn’t mean it ought not to continue and the only way it even has a chance to continue is if the work gets out into the public.
—-Richard Serra

Moonbird and Sax

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Bill Chance

“What I am looking for… is an immobile movement, something which would be the equivalent of what is called the eloquence of silence, or what St. John of the Cross, I think it was, described with the term ‘mute music’.”
—-Joan Miró

Moonbird (Oiseau lunaire), Joan Miró, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

In a picture, it should be possible to discover new things every time you see it. But you can look at a picture for a week together and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.
—-Joan Miró

Moonbird, Nasher Sculpture Center
(click to enlarge)

“Don’t play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you.”
― Charlie Parker, Parker, Charlie E-Flat Alto Saxaphone

“I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song and immediately he’d receive all the money he needed.”
― John Coltrane

Afternoon Cocktails at the Nasher

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Bill Chance

Cyclists at the Nasher
(click to enlarge)

Sunday was the fourth day in a row that I did the same thing – left my house on my bicycle and bought a ticket on the DART train for downtown Dallas.
Thursday-Patio Sessions with the Dallas String Quartet (and bonus dancers)
Friday-Aurora
Saturday-Community Beer Company Swap Meet (and more)

Today the good folks at Dallas Cycle Style had organized a ride to the Afternoon Cocktails at the Nasher. The sculpture center downtown has installed new bike racks out front and in honor of the cyclists would be holding a happy hour for the folks with pedals and two wheels.

As always, I futzed and dutzed and spent too much time packing my bike and getting ready. Still, I had a few minutes to spare as I rode up to the Arapaho train station. Unfortunately, it was a beautiful day… and the last day of the State Fair of Texas… and only one ticket machine was working. I have bought a thousand tickets from those machines – I know what buttons to push by heart and know that a credit card is the quickest way to go. Unfortunately, the folks in line ahead of me (damn rookies) had no clue. I stood stoically in line, clutching my already-out method of payment, while they fumbled and bumbled with the confusing buttons and hard-to-see screen. I kept hearing, “OK, push that and we’ll start over again” and other such time-wasting phrases.

So the God of mass transit strikes again and as I rode up the ramp to the platform, my Red Train was pulling out. I had to wait for the next, which was an orange line, which meant I had to ride a bit farther to get to Oak Cliff, which meant I would probably be late, which meant I had to haul ass and sweat like a pig to try and get where I was going in time.

Which I did. We met up in Bishop Arts with enough time for me to catch my breath and then ride across the Jefferson Viaduct back into downtown in amazingly beautiful weather. There is nothing better than that.

At the Nasher, we attended a lecture on the ten sculptures that have gone up around the city in the exhibition called Nasher Xchange. It was very cool – I am going to have to work on riding my bike to each of these over the next few months.

Riding my bike to the sculptures is appropriate. The panel constantly referred to Dallas as a giant car-choked metropolis – which isn’t untrue… but it isn’t the whole story. You can get around the city without a car… you have to simply want to do it.

There was a lot going on at the museum. It is the Nasher’s ten year anniversary. I couldn’t help but think of the excitement when the museum first arrived.

It hadn’t been open very long when I took Lee down there and shot some photographs of him with the sculptures. Then we went back six years later and took the shots again. I’ve put these up before, but I wanted to see them again.

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.

Lee sitting by Night, 2004

Night (La Nuit) – 2011 (they had moved the sculpture)

Lee standing in Tending (blue) in 2004.

The opening in the ceiling if the installation Tending (blue). A photograph does not do justice.

It’s sad that the sculpture/installation Tending(Blue) by James Turrell is gone – closed off because of the condo tower next door. It was always one of my favorite spots in the city and is sorely missed.

The sun began to set quickly so we took off across downtown. I knew the train would be crowded with folks coming back from the State Fair so I boarded at the Union Station, hanging my bike up on the little hook and sitting back behind it. I had the car to myself through downtown but, sure enough, at the Pearl/Arts District Station the crowd coming from the fair (via the Green Line) packed their way onto the train. About a third of the folks couldn’t get on.

I sat there, steadying my bike against the surge of the crowd. I was pinned and couldn’t even give up my seat. One woman, leaning against my bicycle, was obviously very drunk and exhausted and came close to collapsing – only the press of the thick crowd kept her upright all the way to her stop.

It was a relief to get off the train and pump my pedals the last few miles to my house. A very good day.

I have an early meeting at work on Monday, so I’ll drive my car in. That’s a good idea – but it seems like a shame.

What a great looking bunch of folks.
(click to enlarge)

Arrow to Nasher

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Bill Chance

“Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

“No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

A familiar bit of street, smeared out in time, like a fuzzy memory. All the remembrances of that place are layered upon each other. Some are stronger than others – surprisingly, the strongest are often the oldest.

Because the oldest are the first. When everything is new and fresh.

I remember the first time I walked along – crossed at a light – Ross avenue. The big city was fresh in my young mind. I remember when I first turned off Ross to get to the Nasher Sculpture Center – it was many years later and I wasn’t that young any more (though I was a lot younger than I am now – but I didn’t know that then) but the Nasher was fresh and new. I’ve been back.

Lee inside My Curves are Not Mad – Richard Serra, 2004

Lee inside the same sculpture by Richard Serra – My Curves are Not Mad in 2011. Lee is not the only thing that has grown – look how much larger the trees are.

“Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you”
― Paul Simon

Lee sitting by Night, 2004

Night (La Nuit) – 2011 (they had moved the sculpture)

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Eve, by Rodin, 2004

Eve, by Rodin

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we
imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Street Sign

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Bill Chance

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive

Phoenix pushed back on his chair and leaned up against the rough brick wall. He grinned and watched the woman work her way through the bar, staring at every customer, one by one. She was obviously looking for someone. He was the only person in the place by himself – and he wanted to see what happened when she reached his spot. She glanced his way a few times, and it didn’t take long for her to clear the nearest table and look down at him. He willed his face into its most relaxed, nonchalant expression – something he took pride in and had worked on for years.

“Excuse me, but I’ve arranged a meeting here with someone I’ve never seen in person… are you Brett?”

“Why, yes… yes I am. Glad to meet you.” Phoenix had not even had time to think about the lie… it simply came out. And now… nothing to do except go with it. He put on his biggest, broadest smile and reached out his hand toward the woman.

Instead of taking it, she scooted back about half a step and reached into that cavernous bag she carried.

Phoenix had enough time to think, “Oh, that’s why she has such a large purse,” but not much more as the woman’s hand flashed out with a gigantic chrome plated revolver. She raised it and Phoenix’s brain noticed how it gleamed in the uneven light of the bar. He couldn’t do anything else, though. Propped in the chair like that, he was trapped, it would take at least two or three seconds to tip forward and leap one way or the other… but he had less than one.

The gun roared as the woman kept pulling the trigger and slug after slug pumped out and into Phoenix’s chest at point-blank range.

—- from The Smeebage Affair, by Armando Vitalis

Bill Chance

This is Not Going to Turn Out Well

Tag Archives: Nasher

dear sunset, Nasher XChange, Entry six of Ten

Buried House, Nasher XChange, Entry Five of Ten

Ad Astra

The Forest

Data Flow

My Curves Are Not Mad

Moonbird and Sax

Afternoon Cocktails at the Nasher

Arrow to Nasher

Street Sign

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