One of my reasons to arive ahead of the group Thursday was to get to see first-hand some of the public artwork of Seattle-based artist Dan Corson. Dan was recently chosen to provide the public art component of the planned Hemphill-Lamar Connector, which will create a new connector street that runs under the railroad tracks between Lamar and Hemphill, creating a new link between the southern end of downtown and the Near Southside. (For all Fort Worth Capital Improvement Projects, 2% of the budget goes toward a public art installation.)
Dan toured me around his works. One was the Sound Transit Project, which consists of over 200 Overhead Contact System poles in Seattle’s streetcar system with specialty paint and spire-shaped finials. At a maintenance facility, the poles are striped with black and “safety green” paint. The artwork is inspired by a prehistoric plant indigenous to this region – commonly known as the horsetail or Scouring Rush. Elsewhere, slender curved poles along a transit line feature tips that gracefully curve and blend the dark poles into a metalic sky blue and then to a silver tip. All the tips point west towards Puget Sound.
Another installation we looked at was the Rave Wave Cave, a dark underpass transformed with animated pea gravel-covered waves that erupt from a sculpted sea of pea gravel. At night, moving “psychedelic” lighting animates the space.
We also looked at the Antennae Reeds, an installation at the University of Washington featuring tall aluminum poles with resin tips illuminated by sapphire LEDs at night.
I also got a chance to see his studio near the University of Washington. Dan has done works from Seattle to Florida, and is known for his use of simple yet dramatic shapes and vivid nighttime colors. Unfortunately, since my tour was during the daytime, I did not get the full effect of some of the lighting components that are integral to much of his work. Check out corsonart.com for more of Dan’s work.
I am excited to have someone of Dan’s creativity coming to design a landmark project in Fort Worth.
More to come!
Joel Burns
I like the idea of concealing and downplaying overhead where you can and trees can do a good job of that. Turning the poles into art seems like a good idea in places, but I sure wouldn’t want the whole system to look like a line of giant pixie stix running through town. Those green poles are a little loud. I would want stuff that looks good 20 years after you put it in. Nothing that makes you think, “God, what were we thinking back in 2009?”
Well, in my honest opinion, I don’t care much for his art. It looks demented. The only one that I some-what like is picture number 3 from the top down.
Too many of these look like missiles! Surely something could be done that looks more friendly.