Dallas Museum of Art

Throwback to when I was still in Texas, I had some free time to explore the city so I decided to go to the Dallas Museum of Art. 

This area of Dallas was just beautiful, right across the street was a huge park that had food trucks, a water playground and restaurants nearby.

As I was perusing the galleries I unknowingly stumbled into a space in the museum that was similar to our own at the Betty Brinn. This space was called the Art Exchange and encouraged kids to create their own masterpieces with simple things(pipe cleaners, paper, markers, gluesticks, etc.) and put them on the shelfs for other kids to be inspired by.

The title cards listed what kinds of materials the artist used, the title of the artwork, and the name of the artist.

The best part about this activity was that it invited kids to take home another masterpiece created by another museum guest. I would love to see something like this implemented in our own museum, nudge nudge BAM guys take notes!

Each of the tables were set up like this with scraps of materials in these bins, a roll of tape, some scissors and markers, and a nicely designed prompt to expain the activity.

There were a lot of families busy working on their artwork.

In another end of the "Maker Space" was this wall that invited kids to look at the drawing to their left and recreate just a small portion of it and then paste it on the wall to create a larger version of the same drawing. How cool!

Here is their reference drawing and the crazy thing was that I didn't see any gridlines on this drawing. So that means kids were able to identify their own portion of the drawing and recreate it! 

Zaha Hadid

Bench, designed 2003, excecuted 2006

Cast Aluminum

The museum was free to the public and had a great outside sculpture garden that would be the ideal space to take a break from the city and enjoy your lunch among the art.

I really loved the curves of this bench, it looked so inviting to sit down and take a rest. The artist was 

Finally to the design section of the museum. Ever since taking the industrial design class I really have thought about getting into more building/design work rather than graphic design. I really have an appreciation to fine crafted objects, maybe thats why I just can't understand some of the more conceptual work. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand the chair.

The design section was actually quite small but still inspiring. Take this table for instance.

Spring table, 1993

Russell Buchanan

Steel, fiberboard, glass, and wire

Can you just imagine being the artist and putting this table together? The steel is all tensioned to hold a thick piece of glass as the surface with braided cable, just looking at it gives me anxiety.

The cable adjusters to add/remove tension were a nice addition, and probably a necessity to get everything to work correctly. In this situation form really did follow function.

Hard to tell from the photo, but the woman to the left is staring at two of Frida Kahlo's work. I had to snap at least ONE photo of it because my girlfriend is such a fan. 

I really loved exploring the museum and seeing all the artwork and artifacts that I never thought I would see first hand. It was great to see the work and get inspired, which made me ready to get back into the studio and get to work.

Stay tuned!