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.
“Fashion changes, but style endures.”
― Coco Chanel
Georg Herold, Dallas Contemporary (click to enlarge)
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”
― Oscar Wilde
Georg Herold, Dallas Contemporary (click to enlarge)
Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art
― Charles Bukowski
In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big goddamn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy’s favorite hobby was totin’ his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time.
—-The Shawshank Redemption
The other day, after the really cool bike ride from the Dallas Contemporary, we all returned and hung out for a while, looking at the exhibits. There was some really good stuff… really good.
One special exhibit, off to one side, was Acceleration – a set from 35 artists run out to honor the 35th anniversary of the space. Walking through it, I came around a corner, looked at a sheetrock wall, and found one in particular that really spoke to me.
It was one of the coolest pieces of art/sculpture/exhibition I’ve ever seen.
A simple work by Bradly Brown, named “Escape Plan.” It was a heavy, sharp compass, mounted against the wall. An unseen force turned the compass slowly, and the sharp steel point was slowly digging its way through the wall.
“Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas
The circle cut into the wall displayed a ragged edge where the spike had torn through the outer paper layer. When I looked closely, I could see that it had dug deep, almost through the drywall, and was digging deeper.’
“Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas
I watched it going round and round, and talked to some other folks that walked up. I said, “it must have some sort of mechanism mounted inside the wall.”
Then, on a whim, I walked around until I reached the opposite side of the wall and was surprised when, there, I found the other end – the business end – an electric motor slowly turning a shaft that pierced the barrier – obviously turning the compass on the other side. It was set up as another part… a hidden part of the art. It would have been interesting to find the motor first – to see it moving and try to figure out what it was doing. You would never be able to guess.
The back side of “Escape Plan” by Bradly Brown, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas
I looked closely and saw that it was spring mounted – I assume pulling the mechanism through the wall… eventually.
In downtown Dallas, across Main Street from the Joule Hotel – the hotel with the cool pool, a giant eye has appeared – like a monster from a horror movie – mysterious – it just sits there, thirty feet high… staring. The thing is a sculpture by Tony Tasset. It really is big… and pretty odd to look at – especially at night.
Giant Eye Sculpture, Main Street, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Giant Eye Sculpture, Main Street, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
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
“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
Now that the bicycle photo scavenger hunt for October that Bike Friendly Richardson did is over I wanted to do an entry with my photos and write about the riding. The idea was to ride a bike around the city and take photos of sculptures or fountains with your bike in the picture. There were fourteen sculptures and a map to help you out.
I did all fourteen sculptures (and a bonus) in three rides. It would not have been too hard to ride them all at once – but I didn’t have a whole day. As it was – it was a lot of fun. Quite a few folks did the hunt and posted their photos – pretty cool.
The photos are in the order I took them – the numbers on each description are the ones given on the original scavenger hunt list. These are all hosted on Flickr – click on an image to open up the flickr page.
I had a little time one Saturday Afternoon so I decided to take a quick loop and grab a few sculptures that weren’t too far away. The day was overcast – terrible light for photography… but nice, cool, and windless for bike riding.
4) The Block Cylinder Sculpture – This one is the closest to my house, though it is more isolated from the rest of the sculptures. I rode over there, realized I had forgotten my tripod, then rode home and picked it up. This is an HDR photo made from three shots at different exposures. The day was overcast, the light was terrible.
7) City Hall Fountain – I rode across Highway 75 on Arapaho and was almost hit by someone making a left turn – rushing to avoid an oncoming truck, they didn’t see me. Another HDR image. I tried to take some shots by riding by and hitting the remote release… but that didn’t work very well. Need to work on that technique with a model on a bike and me behind the lens.
1) Humpty FOL Sculpture – Nearby, next to the library – this is the smallest sculpture on the list. It’s a nice peaceful reading area on the north side of the library.
12) Horse Sculpture – Rode down to Beltline to get this photo. The light was bad (still overcast) and the parking lot full of cars… didn’t work too hard – took the photo and took off.
11) Asian Sculptures – After crossing 75 on Beltline into Downtown Richardson, I popped up a couple blocks to get this shot. The DFW ChinaTown center is an old strip shopping area now dedicated to a wonderful selection of Asian Dining Establishments. Everything from Vietnamese Pho, to Ramen, to bargain Sushi, to Dim Sum, to Korean Bar-B-Que and everything in between. They have a whole collection of concrete statuary littering the parking lot. I chose to pose my bike, helmet, and glasses with this guy. I should have gone back with an extra tire and tube and had him pose with a pump in his hand… call it “Fixing a Flat.” I know that sounds disrespectful – but it’s only concrete decorations.
A couple weeks later I took the DART train downtown for a Bonnie and Clyde historical bicycle tour – but the event was rained out. I had my camera, so I rode back to the Galatyn station and rode around, trying to get as many as I could. I would have finished, but the sun set before I grabbed the last three. It was another overcast day, with spitting rain – again, terrible light – but it is what it is.
20.4 mile route (plus another ten miles or so on my trip to downtown)
14) Galatyn Park Fountain – Right off of the DART train is this fountain. Everybody likes this thing. If you look in the background, you can see a train pulling into the station.
9) Critter Garden – Only a little ways north is this familiar group of sculptures – a childrens’ playground along the nature trails that loop through the creek bottom.
6) Palisades Sculpture – I crossed 75 on the trail by the Heights Church, then made my way down to this one. The Palisades Tower piece is one of the sculptures on the list I was not familiar with. I had to lie down in the wet, muddy grass to get this shot – I need to re-do it in brighter light so I can get a little bit better depth of field. Another shot.
5) UTD Sculpture – This sculpture, informally titled “Love Jack” was really hard for me to find. I thought I knew my way around the UTD campus… and I thought that I knew where it was… but I was wrong on both counts. It was fun circling around and around, up and down sidewalks, past all the student and cool buildings – all over the campus for a total of a few miles and well over an hour – but I was getting pretty frustrated and was going to give up when I finally spotted the thing.
10) Silver Tower Sculpture – This was another one I was not familiar with, though I have driven through the nearby intersection hundreds of times. It is set off behind a drug store and a parking lot – hard to see from the road. Cool, though. After I left – even though it had been a long day, it was starting to rain, and I was tired…- I wanted to get the last three sculptures, but the sun was setting so I clicked on my lights and headed home.
Another overcast day, not much light – but not much time left. So I headed out for one last ride to catch the last three sculptures. Ironically, these are the three that I am most familiar with – the ones I ride past the most – and the easiest ones for me to get. Also, I wanted to get one bonus sculpture – one that nobody else had bagged.
13) DART Spring Valley Station Sculpture – I go by this one on my commute to work, but never really looked at it. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
8) Box Sculpture – I found this sculpture a while back and wrote a blog entry about it. I didn’t notice the name “Egri” welded into the steel until now – that confirms that the sculpture is called “Strange Romance” by a late sculptor named Ted Egri from Taos, New Mexico.
Bonus Sculpture – I stumbled across this bronze a while back. It’s hard to find – you will never spot it from the road. But it is definitely in Richardson – but I don’t think I’m ready to say where.
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.
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)
I first heard about Aurora last time it happened, but was out of town that weekend and couldn’t make it. Then, on the way to a play at the Wyly theater, I saw a preview of Aurora – specifically an installation of giant red floating jellyfish.
The last few weeks have been very busy and stressful for me and I didn’t have time (or money) to properly decorate my bike. This sort of thing is, especially right now, beyond my abilities or resources. It was stressing me out a little bit. The only thing I could do is to go to the Dollar Store with a five and a one clutched in my sweaty fist. I bought a couple LED lightsabers, a little lighted pumpkin, and some packages of glowy bracelets.
I gathered up everything in my house with a battery powered light and roll of duct tape, and, after work rode down to Lee Harvey’s – where I taped everything to my bike in a pretty much random fashion. I felt like an idiot – but it worked. Especially the lightsabers. I might try and find a way to more permanently hold those on my bike – they would be useful to increase the visibility for night rides.
Nothing like big, glowing, flashing, green cylinders to get the attention of motorists after dark.
Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia
Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia
Everybody met up and we set off in a glowing, flashing mass – down around downtown
Dallas, into Deep Ellum, then back into the Arts District.
I was immediately surprised and shocked by the crowds. The original idea was to ride through Aurora as a group, but the streets were packed with thick throngs of people and we were immediately split up. I locked my bike up and began to explore.
Aurora was amazing. I kept thinking, “Is this really Dallas?” There were hundreds of artists and installations covering the entire spectrum spread across the vast area from One Arts Plaza, down Flora Street past and including the concert halls and museums, across to Klyde Warren Park and even down towards the Perot. That’s about two square miles of area.
Aurora Dallas 2013
Klyde Warren Park, Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
Not all the exhibits were big – tiny men climbing a column at the Symphony Hall
The crowd was huge. I was so glad I had ridden in on a bike and had a DART pass in my pocket. People were calling in on cell phones – the traffic across the city was at a standstill and there was no parking to be found anywhere.
I spent hours walking around. There is no way to see even a fraction of everything that was offered up, but there were a few items I really wanted to take in.
First, the dancers that I had seen at the Patio Sessions on Thursday were performing on a little grass patch between the Opera House and the Symphony Hall. Through dumb luck I arrived a couple minutes before they started and talked to a parent of one – I told him of their enthusiasm and skill that I had seen the evening before.
The description of their performance:
Ruddy Udder Dance by Claire Ashley
This performance uses a large-scale, painted inflatable sculpture as a prop worn by twelve dancers. A choreographed sequence unfolds. Ashley is interested in both the high-brow aesthetic pleasure found in the painterly abstraction and monumentality of the object itself, and the absurdly low-brow, playful, high-energy, ecstatic dancing experience and pop culture references that ensue as the object moves in space. Directed by Linda James and Kate Walker and performed by the Repertory Dance Company II from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Dancers and Inflatable Cow.
The dancers were arranged as the “feet” or maybe the “udders” of a stylized giant inflatable cow-balloon and danced to a country music tune – throwing the enormous bovine around as handlers held guy ropes and a bank of black lights made the scene glow. It was pretty cool.
Next, I wanted to see the Wyly Theater. I had seen a preview and knew I had to check out the real thing. Several banks of incredibly powerful video projectors were trained on the wall of the Borg Cube – shaped Wyly. The genius is that the program started with an image of the Wyly projected on itself, which then was moved, shifted, deconstructed, and modified until the thing was transformed into a giant 2001-style cube monolith – “It’s full of Stars.”
I found a spot and sat and watched the cycle. Then I realized that viewing it at an oblique angle was even better, so I watched it again. Really cool stuff.
Finally, I wanted to see something inside the Dallas City Performance Hall. Shane Pennington is a local artist that I have been a huge fan of ever since I spent a few days going down to the arts district to watch his ice sculptural exhibition melt into nothingness, releasing the stones contained within. I had read about the screen, a transparent curtain, he made for the Performance Hall – with consists of a grid of computer controlled lights that illustrate shapes moving across the mouth of the theater.
Inside the theater they had the screen up and running. People walking, riding bikes, or pushing carts moved across the screen in a ghostly crowd. Behind the screen a jazz trio performed retro music – a beautiful contrast to the high-tech images they were immersed in.
Shane Pennington’s screen inside the Dallas City Performance Hall, with Jazz Trio.
Midnight approached, and I had to leave – I was a long way from home and I didn’t want to miss the last train.
I did have one last discovery. I didn’t do enough research before Aurora about the nature of the Ciclovia that I was a part of. I didn’t realize that the lighted bike ride was actually a part of the Aurora itself and the ride even had a plaque that spelled that out.
Seeing Aurora, I wondered what it would be like… how cool would that be?.. to actually be a part of it – to be an artist in the event itself, no matter how small or insignificant. Until I found that plaque, I didn’t realize that for the small effort of six bucks and a trip to the dollar store – I was one.
Bike Friendly Cedars and Aurora Ciclovia
Aurora Dallas 2013
Aurora Dallas 2013
The reflecting pool by the Winspear. Aurora Dallas 2013
My bicycle parked next to “Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas (click to enlarge)
“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by ten food steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant in the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears.”
― William Faulkner, Light in August
My bicycle parked next to “Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas
“Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick
“Tomorrow’s Legacy” by Jerry Sanders, Richardson, Texas
Bill Chance 