At the Dallas Arboretum, down at the end of the Crepe Myrtle Alee, sits a little square called Toad Corners. Four huge bronze toads spit water towards a metal sphere and a bubbling fountain in the center. This spot is popular with kids, especially on hot Texas summer days. They direct the water at each other and run through the spray, trying to cool off.
It’s a blast.
Sometime, somewhere, somehow, while perusing the ‘net on a day when, though I don’t remember the details, I most certainly should have been doing something more worthwhile, I came across some sort of magazine article or web page that was extolling the delicious risk of eating fiddlehead ferns. I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but there’s a lot out there… here’s a quick sample for reference purposes:
It is always tempting to put out a link to the Wikipedia entry on Fiddlehead Ferns. Except… how useless – everyone knows how to look something up on Wikipedia. To me, that reminds me of my childhood, when everyone would start their school essays with the phrase, “Webster defines (insert subject here) as (insert dictionary definition here). How lazy can you get? It was especially common with oral reports. If you had five minutes to kill, you could get a good forty seven seconds out of the way with ol’ Webster. I always wanted to start a report with, “Webster defines cunnilingus as (insert definition here) – which has nothing to do with my report on the petroleum industry in Venezuela. Ooops, I’m getting off-subject here. The Wikipedia Definition of Fiddlehead Fern.
The unwritten ethic among fiddlehead foragers is to take three violin tops. A fern produces five to nine fronds per growing season, so harvesting more than three can jeopardize the plant’s survival. Found Food | Fiddlehead Ferns
Think of fiddlehead ferns, those tightly coiled, emerald-green symbols of spring, as ferns interrupted. Fiddlehead-Fern Bruschetta
The ostrich fern is the safest fern to eat, even though it, too, can contain toxins. The fiddleheads of cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea), lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina), and bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) can also be eaten, but all are at least mildly toxic and can cause nausea, dizziness, and headache, so it’s probably best to avoid them. Fiddlehead facts
When the Spiceman is in, you can buy a fistful of exotic Tokyo longs to dazzle the pants off your in-laws (or maybe just your spouse). Best Fiddlehead Fern Finder: Tom “Spiceman” Spicer of F.M. 1410
Fiddleheads have a bright, earthy flavor that calls to mind asparagus, artichokes, and green beans. Fiddlehead Ferns
It fascinated me for a good three minutes. The idea of eating foraged food is cool – the idea of eating foraged food that is toxic if not gathered or prepared properly is even more cool. I could almost taste the slight bitterness and feel the crunchy texture of the boiled coils.
After these slight impressions collected somewhere in my useless mess of gray matter I was on to other tasks, probably working on remembering things like where did I leave my car keys and what is my bank account pin number.
My thoughts on fiddlehead ferndom lay dormant somewhere in there until I was walking around the Dallas Arboretum with my writing group taking photographs of the Chihuly exhibition when I overheard a woman talking. She was staring intently at a guide to the exhibit which I had neglected to obtain at the entrance. She was rattling off the names and locations of the colorful glass sculptures and I heard her say, “It says here he did some sculptures called Fiddleheads but I haven’t seen them yet.”
And that set off the memories. The rest of the day I couldn’t help but keep my eye out for some glass fiddlehead ferns. Finally, in the last garden at the end of all things, there were the fiddleheads sticking up amongst the greenery.
Now I can die in peace.
Fiddlehead fern fiddleheads
In case you think I’m full of shit when I write this stuff, here’s the woman I overheard asking about the fiddleheads. This was taken an hour later, and you can see, she is still looking at her guide book. She is now so tired of looking at it that she has her husband holding it for her. Or maybe that’s her husband on the other side and that’s her pool boy holding the guidebook. Or maybe the three aren’t related at all – maybe they are three technical writers that get together on the weekends to go various place and critique the guidebooks.
a Chihuly Fiddlehead
The glass ferns were growing in a bed of greenery.
A fly enjoying the Chihuly Sculpture. I bet he didn’t have to pay to get in.
More photographs from my writing group’s trip to see Dale Chihuly’s work in the Dallas Arboretum.
One of the many cool things about the installation is that you never knew when you would turn a corner and run into something unexpected. The artist placed large turquoise colored irregular blocks of glass in a rock creek that ran through the gardens. Water ran past the glass and tumbled down the artificial watercourse towards the lake. The glass looked like huge blocks of translucent ice – unexpected and beautiful.
The most powerful and ethereal beauty is that which is a surprise.
“Look at that S Car Go!”
Snails on a Beer Stein.
Schwarmerei
On the way to the restrooms, down in the cool, dim Basement (where the deadly burning rays of the Museum Tower cannot reach) of the Nasher Sculpture Center is a room with three oddly disturbing sculptures. This is the first installation at the Nasher by a local artist. His name is Erick Swenson, and he makes strange meticulous tableaux out of resin, most involving animals in some stage of death or decomposition. They are arrestingly realistic and strangely surreal at the same time.
You can trap and kill snails and slugs in your garden with beer. This sculpture is called Schwärmerei – a German import to English that means something like fanatical enthusiasm, or the deadly insanity of the crowd (a word that could be fine-tuned and well-understood in Germany).
He says, “This is a static object. I’m asking you to look at this for more than three seconds. That’s hard to do sometimes. People just blow through stuff, you know. So it’s leaving things sort of enigmatic and open-ended.”
I granted his wish, staying and staring, then photographing the Stein ‘N Snails. Other than the obvious metaphorical underpinning, it was a gorgeous and highly skilled work of craftsmanship. I can see it as an advertising piece for a new chain of eateries called the Brewpub Escargot.
Unfortunately, I don’t posses a macro lens or decent flash lighting so the photos do not do due justice. For a good picture of a snail go here. So I suppose y’all will have to go down to the Nasher and see for yourself. By the way, the third sculpture, the one hidden from the squeamish public behind the little wall, is a doozy… you are forewarned.
Most folks were spending more than three seconds at the sculpture.
I remember when I first went to the Dallas Arboretum a couple decades ago – one place that I enjoyed and remember was a double row of Crepe Myrtle trees with a walkway running between. Now, after all this time, the trees have grown together overhead, forming a long, dark, mysterious tunnel.
During my writing group’s trip to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit I set up my tripod in the Crepe Myrtle Allee with my camera facing the Dallas Star sculpture down at the end. Here are a couple of HDR three-exposure shots I came up with.
For a larger and more detailed version of this photo – go to the Flickr Page
For a larger and more detailed version of this photo – Go to the Flickr Page
In addition to the interaction between the plants and the glass of Dale Chihuly’s installation at the Dallas Arboretum, there is the interaction between the glass and the other sculptures, mostly cast bronze, that already populate the gardens.
For larger and more detailed versions of this photo – please visit the Flickr Page.
For larger and more detailed versions of this photo – please visit the Flickr Page.
I haven’t been to the Dallas Arboretum in decades. I used to go the the DeGolyer Estate for concerts back in the day, but once it became the Arboretum I’ve only been once. It was close to when it opened and I was disappointed because the plants hadn’t grown out yet. I took Nick there as a toddler because they were giving away free trees. I picked up a little live oak in a coffee can and planted it in back of our house in Mesquite. Everyone gave me a hard time because it was only an inch high (it looked bigger when it was still in its can). Over the decades, though, the thing grew – it’s now a huge beautiful tree.
The problem always was that the Arboretum admission is so expensive. I always felt it was more a private playground for the wealthy members of the Dallas Garden Club than an asset for the city. That was a silly opinion, I know, and I wanted to go visit, but never was able to get around to it.
I have always been a fan of Dale Chihuly, but I hadn’t seen very much of his work, other than some glass flowers at the Dallas Museum of Art. When I read about his exhibition at the Dallas Arboretum I was excited.
Our writing group has branched out into photography. We decided to go down there as a group and take pictures together. Everyone liked that, and one member had a set of tickets in a goody bag from a recent purchase. We picked a day and met down there at the opening, cameras in hand. I had a pack with extra lenses and a tripod and was self-conscious about lugging all that stuff. I shouldn’t have worried, most of the people going in were carrying tons of gear – either photographic or picnic stuff.
For a day I set aside my goal of taking pictures of people and gave myself permission to do “postcard shots.”
There were thick crowds of photographers wandering around. As is typical of Dallas, everyone seemed to be a gearhead. Near the entrance I stood next to a couple – he had a big, manly, camera with a long lens. We were looking at a giant yellow glass tree raised up into the sky.
“It would be cool to come out at night with a tripod and shoot that with a long exposure,” I said, just to make conversation.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” the guy with the big camera said, with a superior air, “I can hand shoot under any circumstances, I just shoot at 3200 ISO.” He waved his expensive hunk of optical glass and circuitry in my face.
“Oh, you are such a show off,” his wife said, the pride evident in her voice. The two of them walked off into a bit of woods. I had to chuckle – gearheads are so funny. I’m happy you can buy all that stuff… but you’ve still got the same old eyes and brain – and that’s what you really take pictures with.
But that little exchange really brought the challenge I faced into focus… so to speak. With hundreds of photographers in the Arboretum snapping hundreds of photographs each all the time from now until the exhibit closes in November…. How can anyone take a picture that is in any way unique? I don’t want to have the same picture as everybody else.
Four of us from our writing group spent about four hours walking around taking pictures. That’s a surprising amount of work, and a lot of walking. It will be interesting to see how we see the same thing in different ways. Peggy already has some of her fantastic photos up – go take a look – plus some more here.
Now I have about a hundred images and a lot of work getting these edited and in a form where they are usable. I’m not sure what I’ll do with all of them – I’ll use my Flickr account to store some. I should be able to get at least a half-dozen blog entries out of it… which is always a good thing.
Oh, the Chihuly Exhibition at the Arboretum is absolutely stunning, by the way. There are many varied groups of glass pieces in all kids of settings. He has done an amazing job of blending the glass with the living plants. His works range from small works interspersed in beds of plants to giant trees, maybe thirty feet high, made completely of glass. Walking through the gardens is an unforgettable experience – as you enter each new area you can’t help but gasp at the unexpected beauty that is waiting there.
I enjoyed taking all these photographs, especially since I wasn’t alone. I’d like to go back without a camera and simply look at the place. I’d like to go down with a sketch pad and some colored pencils. I would love to go back and try to take pictures of real people there among the sculptures, greenery, and beautiful settings.
Still, photographs do not to the thing justice. If you live in the Metroplex, you need to make plans to go down to the Arboretum and see this exhibit. If you don’t live here… I think it’s worth a trip by itself.
We’re really broke right now, but I want to find some way to scrape up the money to buy a membership to the Arboretum. I would love to be able to go down there and simply find a place to sit, look around, and maybe sketch a little bit. Beautiful things are so rare and fleeting in this world and to be able to go to a place like that and… well, simply wallow in the beauty is a wonderful thing.
(click to enlarge)
For a larger and more detailed version – Go to Flickr
Detail of a gigantic yellow glass tree.
For a larger and more detailed version – Go to Flickr
(Click to Enlarge)
For a larger and more detailed version – Go to Flickr
(Click to Enlarge) These boats full of Chihuly glass aren’t really floating on White Rock Lake like it looks. They are on the Arboretum infinity pool – beautiful.
For a larger and more detailed version – Go to Flickr
The night before we went down to the Deep Ellum Festival of the Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos, I pulled a little wad of bills out of a hiding spot and carefully counted. This was what was left of my stash of savings that I had scraped together and held aside for non-essential purchases. I was glad when I found out I had enough to buy another sculpture from an artist that haunts the Deep Ellum Festival, David Pound of twentyheads.com.
He makes little monster heads in wooden boxes out of sculpey polymer clay and found objects. I’m a big fan. He always brings a big inventory to Dallas and it’s hard to choose only one.
I found his booth right after we arrived and I gave everything a once over, then left to think about my decision. We walked down to the other side of the festival and as we were coming back I could see a huge Texas violent spring thunderstorm rising up on the west side of the gleaming towers of downtown. I knew that time was suddenly short so I walked quickly back down to David’s booth to make up my mind.
They all look so cool. Some have backgrounds I especially like, some have more interesting found objects (I particularly liked one with a roadkill rat’s desiccated hand sticking up from his head – I asked about preservation and David said, “A couple days in the sun and it’s like jerky”) and others have facial expressions I like.
I narrowed it down to two – then picked one named “Burrow.” I liked his earth tones, electronic parts, and snarky expression.
Burrow
Now “Burrow” sits on a shelf next to his buddy that I bought last year, “Persuasion.”
Persuation
Last year, for mother’s day, I had David Pound make a pair of earrings for Candy. For the commission, I sent him a photo of our dog, Rusty, and he made her earrings to match.
Earrings I had David Pound make for Candy for Mother's Day last year.
They do look like Rusty
Customers at the Deep Ellum Art Festival looking over David Pound's inventory of little monster heads in boxes.
It's hard to pick only one.
David Pound working on a creation.
Every year, in the spring, Dallas is host to the three day Deep Ellum Art Festival. We try to go every year. I like to refer to it as the Deep Ellum Festival of the Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos.
I wasn’t able to get down there on Friday or Saturday, but managed to carve out a couple hours around noon on Sunday. The sky started to spit on the ride down and the clouds off to the west were looking ominous, so I had to scurry through the throng a little faster than usual.
There were a lot of artists there – more than usual. I was a little disappointed, though. Usually the Deep Ellum Festival of the Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos has a healthy selection of oddball, interesting, and edgy art for sale – but it seems to have been taken over by the usual selection of folks that haunt springtime festivals all across the heartland. There is one sculptor that I look for and he was there with his usual flair (tomorrow’s entry) but otherwise, there wasn’t much to catch my eye for sale.
Now, as far as the folks walking around, that was another story. That was fun.
The festival stretches in a double line of canvas booths lining Main Street for about a mile. It is now growing down a handful of side streets too.
One nice thing about an arts festival is the chance to meet and talk to the artists themselves.
A wide variety of stuff is for sale.
There is a lot of food at the ends - Por Ejemplo - the King of Candy Apples
At each end of the main drag were large stages. This guy was drawing a band - though they had already finished.
Plenty of hipster doofuses to keep things lively.
This woman was waving a turkey leg out of her food trailer. When someone came up to buy one, she said, "Let me get you a fresh one hon, this is my demo model, I've been waving it out this window for hours."
A guy eating a turkey leg being stalked by a woman in a "Reality is a Prison" shirt.
Smaller musical stages were set up out on the end of the side streets.
An artist and his creation.
I really liked these little sculptures... but you'd have to by all of them to get the same effect.
The Museum Tower Condominiums tower over Tony Cragg's "Lost in Thought"
I have been a huge fan of the Nasher Sculpture Center since it was built. I go there all the time. It is truly one of the most comfortable, wonderful, and amazing public spaces I’ve ever seen. Family friendly , educational, beautiful, and a marvelous host to public gatherings – it was a thoughtful and generous gift from Raymond Nasher to the people of the city.
One of the goals of creating the Dallas Arts District, of which the Nasher is a linchpin, was to attract the high-end buzz of the wealthy clientele that enjoy throwing their millions around in order to wallow in the coolness of timeless art. These folks are hard to pry away from the coasts or the ancient alleyways of Europe but a roadfull of expensive venues and billions of dollars of paintings and sculptures was the lure. And so they come. The first habitat for these rare birds is the shiny new Museum Tower, reaching skyward from an odd oval of property where a Woodall Rogers Freeway ramp arced up and around.
Now I have no problem with that. I’m not a wealthy person and will never be. I have to beg and save just to buy a pen, for example. Most of the art scene I enjoy comes on Free Thursdays and Half-Price weekend and such as that, when the upper crust retreats and allows the hoi polloi to enter and tread their hallowed halls. I depend on the charity or at least the indifference of the wealthy patrons – I exist on their scraps – like a roach under the cabinets I scurry out when they aren’t looking for any crumbs that might be left behind.
So if someone wants to build a tower and charge millions of dollars for a two bedroom apartment – so be it. I applaud their industry, toast their imagination, and do not begrudge them their profits. If they want to call their property The Museum Tower – in order to capitalize on its location right next to the Nasher, fine. If they want to charge an extra million dollars per unit simply so the residents can use the museum garden as their side yard – complete with landscaping and a billion in modern sculpture – great. There is plenty of room and if you don’t mind standing next to me, I don’t mind standing next to you.
But don’t forget what side of the bread you’re putting the butter on. Without the museum there is no Museum Tower. Without the arts, there is no Arts District. Do not roast the goose that lays the golden eggs.
It started out with Tending (blue). The high rise stuck it’s ugly head right up into the viewport of James Turrell’s skyspace sculpture, my favorite spot at the Nasher and the best place to watch the sunset in the Metroplex. But, I’ve written about that before. (go read it)
An oversight, perhaps… pretty damn sloppy, though, if you ask me. You spend that much money on a building, make that much profit, can’t you figure out ahead of time that it’s going to ruin a great work of art? Or do you realize it and simply not say anything until it’s too late. Turrell can fix it, maybe, but when? He’s got other things to do.
And now, it’s happened again. And it’s a lot more serious this time.
They have put the mirrored cladding on the building and it is reflecting so much extra sunlight into the building at the Nasher that they are having to install shades simply to allow the newest sculptures in the room. Sunlight destroys art – but is necessary for art and the Nasher has always been very proud of it’s carefully engineered sunscreen roof. The architect spent a lot of time and effort designing a structure that allowed light for viewing in while blocking the damaging direct rays of the Texas sun. It was a brilliant triumph of design and construction and made for a world-famous light and airy museum that was a strong point of pride for the entire city.
It was a brilliant triumph until a few weeks ago when someone installed a giant mirror reaching five hundred feet into the sky right next door that shot laser beams of killer sunlight into the Nasher from an entirely unexpected direction.
Read the articles:
Nasher to Museum Tower: Watch Your Glass, It’s Frying Us
Watch Your Glass, It’s Frying Us, Continued
Museum Tower Reflected Light Study
Nasher Sculpture Center says glare from Museum Tower is causing harm
Museum Tower Begins Visual Assault on James Turrell’s Tending, (Blue)
Mayor wades into uproar over Museum Tower’s glare
Museum Tower Glare Threatens Nasher Art
Nobody ever clicks on links, so here’s the skinny from the Dallas Morning News:
Officials at the Nasher Sculpture Center say that reflective glass recently installed on the exterior of Museum Tower, its new, 42-story neighbor in the Arts District, is compromising its indoor galleries, destroying its outdoor garden and threatening its future as a Dallas landmark.
Now under construction at the corner of Olive Street and Woodall Rodgers Freeway, Museum Tower heralds its proximity to the “tranquil garden” of the Nasher as a prime selling point for its residential units, which cost between $1 million and $5.4 million.
This makes me so angry I could spit. There is a city code that says, “A person shall not conduct a use that has a visible source of illumination that produces glare of direct illumination across a property line of an intensity that creates a nuisance or detracts from the use or enjoyment of the adjacent property.” For years I have had city inspectors quote much more obscure bits of code than this and made places I work do all sorts of crazy stuff.
But then again, the places I have worked have only employed thousands of ordinary people. They haven’t been home to a handful folks that can afford five million dollar apartments. They haven’t been owned by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System (that’s who bought the tower).
When the Nasher was built, there was an agreement with Raymond Nasher, part of the covenant that helped him agree to build the museum and give his personal collection to the people of Dallas that stated the building next door would be a maximum of 21 stories and have a maximum reflectivity of 15. Now it is 42 stories with a reflectivity of 44.
So here we have a story of corporate greed and hidden scandal. Men like Raymond Nasher are no more. I notice that mere months after he passed away – a new LA based architect was brought in to fuck things up and the tower doubled in size and reflectivity, causing all these problems -, about the time the City Pension System decided to make its purchase. I guess they knew then the city would not put up a fight. Mary Suhm, the Dallas City Manager says, “It’s not something we have jurisdiction over.” Well, she certainly knows which side of her bread is buttered.
Meanwhile, the art continues to bake and the goose that lays the golden egg is cooked. At least they are using green solar energy to do it.
The condominium tower going up next to the Nasher that is ruining Tending (blue).
Bill Chance 