Over the hill and across the ford and down by the meadow gate
May her days be many, her days be few,
The dream of the maiden will never come true.
For the soft wind carried the moment away,
And the birds they sang, but they would not stay
By the meadow gate.
—-Kate Chopin, By The Meadow Gate, last stanza
Again In The Meadow
James Surls
2002, Steel, Paint
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer
One of the nice things about travelling around the… well, around… looking at sculptures is when you find stuff by sculptors you’ve seen before – and especially when you’ve done entries on them.
At the new Hall Sculpture Garden at the side of the new KMPG Plaza Building in the Arts District I found Stainless Internet by George Tobolowsky. His work is scattered around the Metroplex – including two at the Irving Arts Center:
It’s a Slam Dunk
and
Square Deal #2
Take a look at them – compare and contrast.
The Stainless Internet
George Tobolowsky
2015, Stainless Steel
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
The Stainless Internet (Detail)
George Tobolowsky
2015, Stainless Steel
Hall Sculpture Garden
Dallas, Texas
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle
Design District
Dallas, Texas
Bicycles lined up outside Community Beer Company, Dallas.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
—-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
Mural, Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.
—-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
“I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems
(click to enlarge)
Mural on Main Street,
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Mural by Travis Haas
Part of the 42 Murals Project
“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
Rodeo clown vibrations are crackin’ the skulls of false gods.
—-written in blue Sharpie on the side of an abandoned computer monitor
I am, of course, a fan of street art – the odder the better – and of guerrilla publishing. In my wanderings around town, I once stumbled across an interesting piece of text plastered up on a wall in Deep Ellum – Text on the Streets.
Stuck on a plywood-covered window. Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Then, over a year later, I found the same work stuck in a bottle on a park table in Oak Cliff – Message in a Bottle – Shazam!
Message in a Bottle
I have wondered about the artist – and wasn’t able to find out much. Some other folks were looking too, and I found a few examples of his work photographed and posted on the internet.
Here
Here
Here
Here
Then, this weekend, another year later, I found more of the artist’s work in Deep Ellum.
First, I stumbled across a pink decorated metal box on an out-of-the-way stoop.
Box found
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Inside the box was a Xeroxed art work, with writing on the reverse.
Fantastic Cosmic Kismet Vibrations are flowing to you and through you NOW!
Obviously the same person. Walking onward, I found that he had kicked his stuff up a notch. In front of Braindead Brewing I found an old decorated computer monitor. It is good to see that in the last few years he has learned how to spell Hootenanny.
The Future is Now
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
The Universal Flow has led you to this exact moment in time and space.
Rodeo Clown Vibrations
Really cool stuff. I bow down.
Oh, and by the way, on the piece of paper found in the box, I discovered a clue that led me to find the artist… they even have a Facebook Page.
So who is it? I don’t think I’ll let on. Find it yourself. The clues are there.
Jung said: “Proceed from the dream outward…”
It is interesting to return to the original definition of a word we use too often and too carelessly. The definition of a dream is: ideas and images in the mind not under the command of reason. It is not necessarily an image or an idea that we have during sleep. It is merely an idea or image which escapes the control of reasoning or logical or rational mind. So that dream may include reverie, imagination, daydreaming, the visions and hallucinations under the influence of drugs – any experience which emerges from the realm of the subconscious. These various classifications are merely ways to describe different states or levels of consciousness. The important thing to learn, from art and from literature in particular, is the easy passageway and relationship between them. Neurosis makes a division and sets up defensive boundaries. But the writer can learn to walk easily between one realm and the other without fear, interrelate them, and ultimately fuse them.
—-Anais Nin, The Novel of the Future, Chapter One – Proceed from the Dream Outward
Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas
The other day I rode my bike past Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat on a wall in downtown Dallas. Last weekend I rode back by there to see the finished work. Basquiat in on one side, and a cool stylized tree is on the other side of the liquor store sign.
I really like the murals – they are in a crackerjack location – a lot of people are going to see them.
Eric Mancini Mural
face of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini Mural
Dallas, Texas
“Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.”
― Hugh Hefner
Playboy Dallas
Design District
Dallas, Texas
Over the last year or so, the Dallas Design District has become one of my favorite destinations – especially for riding my bicycle.
Right off Riverfront, in the heart of the district, appeared a huge steel replica of the Playboy Bunny logo, alongside a black-painted muscle car on a tilted slab of concrete.
On group bike rides there was some snickering and snide snarky sermonizing about these incongruous objects. I, on the other hand, never really gave it much thought – except to get out my camera and take some snaps.
Today, I was surfing around this internet-thing, and stumbled across the story of the Playboy Marfa. The mystery was solved.
Marfa is this strangely cool West Texas town – half old-school West Texas ranchland, a throwback to the old wild west – and half postmodern hip art colony. A mix that doesn’t always agree – but somehow gets along to the betterment of both.
One thing that both groups don’t like at all is crass commercialism.
So when the Playboy Corporation rented some space and erected this faux-artistic giant steel advertisement the locals were appalled. They resented the use of their wilderness artistic tradition for advertisement. Everyone was up in arms, including the Texas Highway Overlords.
Playboy Marfa
now moved to Big D
Marfa, Texas
It didn’t take long for the site’s permit to get itself yanked – Playboy Marfa had to go. The locals were happy.
But, What is Art?
Luckily, there is Dallas. You see, Dallas doesn’t care about crass commercialism. The crasser, the better. As Dallas updates itself it is careful not to fully abandon its past – its history of tackiness, moneyed kitsch, and big everything. And I like it.
It is embodied in the phrase I’m starting to see – partially in response to the popular “Keep Austin Weird” campaign down I35 a few miles…
“Keep Dallas Pretentious”
…which is interesting on several levels – once you think about it and embrace it.
So Dallas gets a new sculpture – Playboy Marfa becomes Playboy Dallas (at least for as long as the exhibition lasts).
Good.
Design District, Dallas, Texas
Design District
Dallas, Texas
Design District
Dallas, Texas
I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy. I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.
—-Jean-Michel Basquiat
This last weekend, I dragged myself out of bed… if not exactly very early, then rather earlier than later. I thought of what I needed to do with the rapidly slipping away day and I thought, “I need some miles and some photos.”
So I packed my camera into a handlebar bag and rode to the DART station – intending on taking the next train that pulled in, no matter which direction it was going. The Red Line came first, going south, so I headed downtown.
The day was warming quickly and I didn’t feel very good – so I wasn’t going to be able to get as many miles as I wanted. I rode to Klyde Warren Park and picked up something to eat from a Food Truck, read a book, and rested for a bit. Then I headed to Deep Ellum to see what I could see.
Sometimes, it’s important to be able to trust fate, to follow your nose and see where you end up.
As I crossed Ross I saw someone up on a ladder spray painting a mural on the back wall of a building. I’m a big fan of urban murals but have rarely been able to see one actually being made. The artist was working off a photoshopped photo of the site with the design, taped to the wall. I parked my bike and dug out my camera.
The mural was being painted by an artist from Denton, Eric Mancini. He said he was Velcro-ing some artworks to the building when the owner came out and told him he had been thinking about placing a mural there. Eric was glad to comply.
The mural was a stylized Technicolor portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. “You can tell by the hair,” Mancini said.
We chatted a bit about art, about Denton (“Denton has become what Austin thinks it is” – one of my favorite sayings), this and that. “I’ll finish this later today and then do one of my tree paintings on the rest of the wall,” he said. He needed to get painting and I needed to get some more miles so I packed up and rode off – he climbed back up his ladder.
Now, this weekend I’ll go back and take some photos of the finished work. More photos, more miles.
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Design for an Eric Mancini mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 