Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
She sits in the park on a red blanket with a bottle filled with blue drink. She watches her dog, her child, her husband, while she doesn’t move herself – except her eyes. Lasering back and forth across the grassy patch they stay on target. Meanwhile, the world moves on, unknown.
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
It is too late.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, opening lines.
Machine gun and pinup girl
The doomed flyboys of WWII painted pinup girls on the noses of their B-17s cementing the fusion of sex and bombs, of beautiful women and annihilation from the sky, of danger and love, of longing and luck, of desire and death.
Image from Wikipedia.
This is the (arguably) most famous of all, the “Memphis Belle.”
I give you a reproduction, a homage if you will – painted on a restored old car, a “Rat Rod” – complete with fake machine guns mounted over the exhaust headers.
Rat Rod – Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Sex and power and death and speed, beauty and doom, lust and destruction – a potent cocktail that tastes like licorice and smells like gasoline.
I’ll tell you ’bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Soft drivin’, slow and mad, like some new languageNow, listen to this, and I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas
I’ll tell you ’bout the Texas Radio
I’ll tell you ’bout the hopeless night
Wandering the Western dream
Tell you ’bout the maiden with wrought iron soul
—-The WASP, Jim Morrison
Revolution Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
What could be better than sitting on the lawn in a park in the middle of the big city, bracing your sketchbook on your friend’s back while you drew the giant crystal buildings that surround you.
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
There is that very well known giant sculpture of a bigger-than-life cattle drive in downtown Dallas. You know the one – the one with all the tourists taking photographs.
But those aren’t the only bronze steers in the Metroplex. Out in Frisco, in a sort-of-hard-to-find spot called Central Park, they have a few put in.
Bronze cattle drive, Central Park, Frisco, Texas
The stone is strong, but the bronze is stronger. The cattle burst through the rocks piled into a wall – they explode with power – an irresistible force meets a strong, yet moveable object.
But at the moment they escape the stockade – exactly when they erupt into freedom… they are frozen. Suddenly motionless in space, trapped in static time – helpless. For what better prison than the polished and tranquil passage of silent, lifeless time. Time passed is more powerful than any corral of stone, the only inescapable confinement.
Like the bronze steers we are all given an eternal sentence in the slammer of time, trapped in a single moment, the eternal present.
When you want genuine music – music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pinfeather pimples on a picked goose – when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
—- Mark Twain
John Pedigo of the O’s. From a photograph taken at The Big Texas Beer Fest, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas.
(click to enlarge)
They think the banjo can only be happy, but that’s not true.
—-Bela Fleck
I have begun to look everywhere for sculpture and am finding it in unpredictable places. As always, I have a soft spot for artwork that is neglected/forgotten/ignored/abandoned – it becomes an unexpected pleasure. A needed reminder of the fact that art is all around us. We only need to open our eyes.
Near where I work is a campus, Richland College, that I was checking out for outdoor artworks – especially sculpture. I’m familiar with that campus – have been going there for various reasons for decades… and thought I knew everything about its grounds.
But I found a reference to an outdoor sculpture that I knew nothing about. It was called “A Place to Gather” and was done by Linnea Glatt – the sculptor that did “Harrow” in Lubben Plaza downtown (one of my favorites). She also did “A Place to Perform” at the White Rock Bathhouse Cultural Center. I have always enjoyed stopping there on my bike trips around the lake.
What she built at Richland was a small outdoor installation that consisted of a space bounded by two walls, containing a couple of wooden benches. Truly a place to gather.
A photo from The Dallas Art Revue of A Place to Gather when it was first installed.
I had never noticed it. I had a few moments, so I went over there to look for it. I was astounded to find it, overgrown and ignored, between a couple of low earthen ridges in the fields to the east of campus.
There are soccer fields built all around that spot – and I have watched… easily a hundred kid’s soccer games there. Who knows how many times I have walked right by the sculpture, usually hauling a folding chair and a cooler full of drinks for the kids, without ever noticing that it was there. I even remember clearly walking over those little hills in the heat.
The most developed soccer field is right over the little rise to the south – I remember when Nick broke his arm in a game there.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt, with soccer fields nearby
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt. The little benches are still there – it’s a peaceful spot.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt. The weeds are taking over.
A Place to Gather – by Linnea Glatt
I enjoyed checking it out. It’s more than a little overgrown now – with some graffiti sprayed on the concrete and some trash starting to accumulate. I’m sure one of the purposes of the work is to let it settle into the landscape but I wish it could get cleaned up a little.
I’d like to go sit there sometime… sit and write, maybe talk to someone. After all, it is a place to gather.
I was walking home from somewhere the other night – late at night. Pitch dark. There was this big field – never mind exactly where – but the important thing is that it was between where I was and where I needed to be. So I walked across it, diagonally… which is the straight line, the shortest distance between the two points – where I was and where I needed to be.
It’s odd that there is a field like this, this big, this empty, in the middle of a city. Land is expensive, after all… and there is only so much of it. But if you look closely, there are a lot more of these expanses of empty space, of ragged grass, of nothingness, than you think.
But you don’t look closely. Nobody does. There is nothing so hidden, so mysterious, as a big empty field in the middle of a city.
It is so hidden and mysterious that it feels odd to walk across it in the pitch dark. Very odd.
In the middle of the field, when I was a long way from the nearest streetlight, when the only light was provided by the half-moon overhead, I saw something where I didn’t expect something to be. There was a small but bright red light hovering in space, not too far away.
As I approached, it began to change, and then it was blue. Then it was green. Then it was red again. Interested and confused, I walked toward the little light.
It turns out there was a small, ragged tree there, all alone, separated from the rest of the world of trees. You would really never notice that tree otherwise – it wasn’t much of a tree… more like a big shrub – though of a tree shape. And somebody had put something in the tree.
There was enough moonlight for me to make it out. Someone had firmly planted a solar-powered LED lit plastic butterfly in the tree. They had attached its metal pole to a branch and left it to run. It would hide there all day, soaking up the sun, so that its constantly changing light would stream out all night.
Here… I think this is it. Not too expensive, but not free, either. They did a good job of mounting it in the tree, with some padding to protect the branch and large, thick zip ties.
Who did this? And why?
It is impossible to see this from the street. It is only by sheer accident that I walked near enough to the thing in the night to notice the light. Even in the day, you would never see the thing unless you happened to walk right next to it then look up. I have never seen anyone in that field… ever.
So it’s a little secret between me and the person that put it up. I sort of like that. Don’t tell anybody about it… OK?
I walked back during the day to take a picture of the Solar Powered LED Butterfly in the tree.
I took the DART train downtown to a Beer Festival and made my train on time. Because of this, I was an hour early and sat down in Klyde Warren to hang out and wait until the festival opened. The sun was near setting and the sky was glowing – the skyscrapers sharp and elegant.
Looking at the collection of crystal towers, my attention was drawn toward six in particular. Thinking about why these meant something to me; I realized I had watched these (and many others) while they were built. I worked in Downtown Dallas in the early eighties – for a couple years in the Kirby Building (now converted into condominiums) and for a couple more in the historic Dallas Cotton Exchange (I loved that building – unfortunately, it was dynamited in 1994 to make room for a parking garage for the 1st Baptist Church).
The early eighties were a time of frantic building in Texas, especially in downtown Dallas. The giant construction crane was considered the state bird. This all came to a spectacular stop in the Savings and Loan crash of the late eighties – but at the time nobody could see that disaster coming.
I was young and a recent immigrant to the big city and was absolutely fascinated with watching the towers going up. In those pre-internet days detailed news was unavailable to the unwashed masses – so the construction was always a surprise to me. Since it would take, say, two years or more to build these it was like a slow-motion reveal, a mystery unveiled piece by piece, day by day.
A block would be cleared and then a gigantic hole slowly carved deep down into the chalky bedrock. Then the steel, concrete, or combination skeleton would rise, floor by floor, emerging from the scurrying crowds of hard-hatted workers like a living thing.
Finally, the skin would be hung and, only then, would the real shape and color of the building revealed. It was never really what it looked like while it as going up – the architects played with shapes and forms, adding extra corners and geometric sleights of hand. The final form was always a gigantic pleasant surprise.
Those were exciting, innocent days. Now, looking at the buildings bring back those memories. I can see, in my imagination, beyond the glass and stone cladding to the hidden skeleton of these skyscrapers, remember when the supporting framework was fresh and exposed.
Three skyscrapers from Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
The Chase Tower
2200 Ross – 1987 – I recently took photos of a helicopter making a delivery here.
People call this one the building with a hole in it. On the 40th floor is a skylobby that offers good views of the Uptown area of the city – I haven’t visited this, but would like to. I watched it get started but was working out in Garland before it was finished. The skyscraper was designed by SOM and is 738 feet tall with 55 stories, making it the 4th tallest building in Dallas.
San Jacinto Tower
2121 San Jacinto – 1982
This is the tan triple building in the center. I watched this one go up in detail. While it was being built it was not obvious that it would have that unique, triple structure – the effect was made with add-ons at the end. The building is 456 feet tall and is 33 stories, making it the 20th tallest building in Dallas.
Trammell Crow Center
2001 Ross – 1985
This one was really cool to watch. It was very close to where I worked and was clearly visible outside a window near my cube. Although I left downtown before it opened, I did see all the visible construction right in front of my eyes. The skyscraper is Post Modern in styling and is 686 feet tall with 50 stories. The Trammel Crow Center is the 6th tallest building in Dallas and is named after its principal tenant.
Three more skyscrapers from Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
To the west are three more:
Lincoln Plaza
500 N. Akard – 1984
This triangular building went up on the site of the old YMCA – I watched them implode that building. It has a cool upper-crust restaurant (Dakota’s) in the basement – you go into an elevator sticking up in the sidewalk to get down to it. Lincoln Plaza is 579 feet high with 45 stories, and is the 13th tallest building in Dallas.
These last two flank Thanksgiving Square – one of my favorite spots back in the day. It’s getting a little run-down and forgotten now – but in the early 80’s it was the place to hang out for lunch on a warm spring day.
Energy Plaza
1601 Bryan – 1983
This is another building that I watched with interest – it ended up looking a lot different than I thought. I.M. Pei & Partners designed this 49 story building located on the north side of Thanksgiving Square. On top of the tower is a triangular communications tower that is modeled after the Eiffel Tower — only smaller and three sided. Energy Plaza is the 9th tallest building in Dallas and with a height of 629 feet.
Thanksgiving Tower
1601 Elm – 1982
The rearmost of these three is Thanksgiving Tower. This was was almost finished when I started working in Dallas – I was there when it opened. This 50 story all glass skyscraper faces into Thanksgiving Square. Thanksgiving Tower is 645 feet high and is the 8th tallest building in Dallas. If you look at it you can see the the distinctive reflection of Republic Center Tower – a skyscraper that has been there since 1954 – ancient by Dallas Standards.
As I have been looking around the area at local sculptures I have been running into multiple works by local sculptors. I have already put up entries on two works by Joe Barrington – Roadrunner with Lizard and The Headlines Screamed, Baithouse Disappears. I’ve found two more – one can wait – but tonight I give you 4 Ravens, Nevermore!
Joe Barrington
Throckmorton
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
2000, metal, paint
Frisco, Texas
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
Joe Barrington
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
Joe Barrington
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
Joe Barrington
4 Ravens, Nevermore!
The Raven, read by Christopher Walken
Bill Chance 