Window display, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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Tag Archives: Sculpture
The Line Makes Itself Felt
“The Line makes itself felt,– thro’ some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself as heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we’re awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,– sound, sky, vegetation,– may have announced it. Perhaps ’tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover’d part of the Sensorium,– does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
Cedars Open Studios
1805 Clarence Street
Dallas, Texas
There is a geometry to art.
Not Giving a Damn
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn”
― Orson Welles
Cedars Open Studios
1805 Clarence Street
Dallas, Texas
We Are Going To Cross It
“Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away
Keeper of the Plains,
Wichita, Kansas
One With Carved Flames
“Harvey wasn’t interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they’d been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Thought Myself Out Of Happiness
“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer
I wonder what this guy is thinking. He’s been in that glass box a long time.
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Where the Sun Sails And the Moon Walks
“Farewell,” they cried, “Wherever you fare till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!” That is the polite thing to say among eagles.
“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,” answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again
Central Business District
New Orleans, Louisiana
This is the eagle on top of the Duggins Law Firm building in downtown New Orleans.
New Orleans Gargoyle
Gargoyle
n. A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building. This was especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical structures generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues’ gallery of local heretics and controversialists. Sometimes when a new dean and chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others substituted having a closer relation to the private animosities of the new incumbents.
—-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
When in New Orleans, sometimes we stay at the interesting St. Vincent’s Guest House. The place is decorated with the wonderful bronze sculptures of Thomas Randolph Morrison. Especially notable is the work entitled “New Orleans Gargoyle” hanging off the clock tower – a horrible monster grinning while offering his victim’s disembodied head to passers-by.
I had read that there was another copy of this sculpture hanging around New Orleans. A developer had converted an industrial building in a run-down area into luxury condominiums and had hung the sculpture on the side of the building to help attract attention.
With a little online sleuthing I found the thing was at the corner of Chippewa and Jackson. In the Lower Garden District. It was an easy ride over to snap a photo. The light wasn’t perfect (the statue was half in shade) and I couldn’t get too close (the property was fenced and gated) – but it was cool to see the guy hanging there, leering, and showing off his prize.
New Orleans Gargoyle,
Thomas Randolph Morrison,
New Orleans, Louisiana
Man’s Heart, Away From Nature, Becomes Hard
“Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life – that to the white man is an ‘unbroken wilderness.’
But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.
For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world.
But we were wise. We knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard.”
― Chief Luther Standing Bear
Another view of the Keeper of the Plains sculpture, Wichita, Kansas
A Vision Was Given In My Youth
And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
—-Black Elk, from Black Elk Speaks
Keeper of the Plains sculpture, Wichita, Kansas
Bill Chance 