Houston’s Hermann Park Conservancy and Arts Fort Worth have announced the installation of new public art sculptures.
In 2014, to commemorate its 100th birthday, the Hermann Park Conservancy launched Art in the Park, an initiative to bring a series of contemporary art installations to the park. To support the continuation of the project, the Conservancy established the Fund for Public Art in 2017. This year, the organization has revived Art in the Park with the installation of Alyson Shotz’s Scattering Surface.
Ms. Shotz is a Brooklyn-based artist known for her massive sculptures that explore the phenomenological experiences of space, gravity, light, and matter. According to the Conservancy, her 16-foot sculpture Scattering Surface, “refers to a cosmological theory about the first light of the universe that is visible to us.” The work is made up of thousands of stainless steel circles that reflect light and present a distorted version of the world around it. The piece is displayed in an area adjacent to McGovern Lake and the Japanese Garden.
Additionally, a new work by Anthony Suber was commissioned as part of Art in the Park. Mr. Suber’s Canopy is on view in the Commons near the west entrance to the Japanese Gardens. The installation of the work is currently underway and should be complete later this week.
Last month, Arts Fort Worth, a nonprofit organization that manages the Fort Worth Public Art program, announced two new public artwork commissions that will be dedicated this summer. One piece, Right Turn Only, by Mark Reigelman, a Brooklyn-based artist, has been installed in a West Fort Worth roundabout. The playful spiral design is meant to reference the spiraling air patterns created by airplane wings, honoring the community’s aeronautical history. It is made up of hundreds of blue arrows that point slightly upward and to the right.
In Southwest Fort Worth, Gordon Huether’s Vision has been installed outside of the Fort Worth Police Department’s South Patrol Division. The California-based artist has created a number of public art pieces at sites across the U.S., including an installation at the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston. The mirrored sphere is meant to exemplify the traits that the artist sees as necessary for effective policing: clarity, transparency, awareness, and reflection. A dedication will be held for Mr. Huether’s sculpture at 3501 Risinger Road on Monday, July 29 at 10 a.m.