(I’ve been meaning to post something about this for more than a year. I can remain silent no longer.)
I don’t want to hurt the feelers of the artist who drew up the public art on display on downtown highway pillars ‘neath Woodall Rodgers (at Maple-Routh Conn.) and ‘neath I-45 (at Main St.). But I can’t imagine he or she looks at the project and says, “Yep. That’s some of my finest work.”
My theory for the steel, Tetris-like wraparounds is that there were leftover materials from a nearby construction project … in 1982. Someone thought, “Give me a handful of rivets and I’ll give you a masterpiece.” And perhaps there were still slivers of cross-cut steel remaining, and the artist(s) decided to use them as a sort of gateway into Deep Ellum. But paint them shiny blue and green first–you know, to represent the vibrancy of the neighborhood. Oh, and why not throw in a trompe l’oeil on the three overpasses? You could make a blue orb. Neat! Ugh. Downtown Dallas is allegedly on the brink of forefrontitude of architecture and art and all things cultural. Can’t we clean up some of this clutter?
Photos by me below.
Next up (someday): Uptown Signage Needs a Redo.
