Intervention

FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS around the Southwest, it’s a time of renewal. In May, the city of Dallas’ Carpenter Park unveiled Portal Park Slice, a reimagined and repositioned work by renowned artist Robert Irwin. “The landscape architecture firm that designed Scissortail Park in Oklahoma City also designed Carpenter Park, and their two principals—George Hargreaves and Mary Margaret Jones—were the ones who persuaded Bob Irwin to reconsider his original instructions to the City of Dallas to throw away his piece since the site was changing,” says Amy Meadows, president and CEO of Parks for Downtown Dallas. “It’s a really neat story!” Irwin, ninety-three, is known for site-specific artworks that explore light through space and architecture. He eventually reconfigured the 1981 work in response to the park’s redevelopment, reorienting the steel sculpture to an east-west bearing so that it runs through a hill with a view of the city’s skyline while adding a filigree piece to mimic the trees of the park. “Carpenter Park is a unique opportunity to revitalize a vacant green space bisected by roadways into a vibrant park that hosts one of Robert Irwin’s early, iconic works,” Meadows says. “We look forward to sharing this space, and this art, with the citizens of Dallas.”