Art in Dallas and Fort Worth...

I saw a bunch of art recently!

When my parents were visiting my dad had a meeting in Fort Worth, so we decided to stop by the Modern Art Museum. The current special exhibit is Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990. My favorite piece was by Abraham Cruzvillegas which was created with several pieces of paper -- throw away stuff, receipts, notes, tags, bits of newspaper. Each piece was painted yellow and mounted on the wall in a corner of the gallery. The artist statement noted that sometimes the corner of a gallery is overlooked or ignored... as are these small bits of paper.

I couldn't find a picture of the piece we saw, but here is a similar work by Cruzvillegas.

I also really like Thomas Glassford's installation made entirely of used broom sticks gathered from dumps in Mexico City. This is just half the installation. There are hundreds more arranged broomsticks off to the right... and some on the floor like a rug that you can just see at the bottom of this picture.

Here's a link to video interview with Glassford.

The exhibit includes a huge variety of media, installations, video, audio, interactive pieces, etc. Some I liked, some I didn't.

Also at the Modern, there was a small collection of works by Terry Haggerty. So, when we went to Claire's high school playoff football game at Cowboys Stadium, we recognized his work above one of the concession stands.

We saw lots of other art at the stadium. It's actually a large and important collection of contemporary art chosen specifically by the Jones family to "enhance the fans experience at the stadium." In fact, there was even a free iPhone app including a map of all the works and audio and video downloads with info about the art and artists. Very cool! We didn't have access to the whole stadium, so we didn't everything, but I especially liked Coin Toss by Annette Lawrence.

It's a wire installation above one of the entries. You can totally imagine how it was inspired by the coin toss that begins every football game.

We also visited the George W. Bush Presidential Center with my parents. As a museum, it's very well designed with lots of info and interactive exhibits. We're a nerdy family and we like history, so it was a good place to visit. But, mostly it made me sad and overwhelmed. There are so many problems and struggles in our world and few of them are solved easily. 

I got over my sadness when I saw a stunning painting in the museum cafe by Mary Vernon titled Sculpture with Birds.

A waitress told me that Vernon is a professor of art at SMU. The museum is on the SMU campus. I looked her up when I came home and loved looking through her website gallery. In the image above, you can't really see the detail or get a sense of the energy of the brush strokes. (Probably not even made with brushes.) I couldn't find another image of the painting, but there are several that are similar  on her website.

Really good stuff. I love looking at art and I love thinking about and further studying of the pieces I find inspiring. And sharing them with you!