AT&T Stadium Art Tour

AT&T STADIUM

Dear Readers, The Travelling Toe has been AFK (away from keyboard) as the Easter Bunny was just as bad as Santa Clause, because he left another case of bronchitis along with the chocolate Easter egg...he was so mean.

Anyway, before the Easter holiday, The Travelling Toe and 3 Dear Friends decided to do a tour of the enormous AT&T Stadium in Arlington. It is not only known as being the home stadium of the NFL football team, the Cowboys, but also hosts concerts such as Kenny Chesney, who will be appearing there on May 19th.  Additionally, other athletic events are scheduled at the stadium such as soccer games and monster truck rallies!

But we chose to do a different type of tour.  Rather than the standard stadium tour, we did the art tour.  AT&T Stadium utilizes art work to enhance the function and spirit of the stadium.  

Our tour guide was Phil Whitfield and he was extremely knowledgeable about all the 
artwork installations and the artists as well.  Mr. and Mrs. Jones hand picked Phil to work with the artists and assist them with the art installations. As there are numerous works of art integrated throughout the stadium, only a few favorites will be highlighted in this post.

The tour began with a installation by Jim Campbell, who is also an electrical engineer. He used individual hanging LED lights to format digital imagery.  As you gaze at the lights, footage from several football plays can be seen running through the light field.

As we walked around we found a beautiful red and white striped wall above one of the concession stands.  It is titled "Two Minds" and is by Terry Haggerty.  It gives the illusion of a waving flag or banner.

Daniel Buren created a wall titled, "Unexpected Variable Configurations: A Work In Situ".  He used yellow tiles with interjections of white tiles with black stripes throughout the wall.  The question is, "Is it a wall or is it an art installation?"  That is a question each guest has to decide for themselves!

One of our favorite pieces of art work was by Franz Ackermann.   The colors he used were bright and vibrant.  The gigantic murals take up several pieces of wall space with the escalator bisecting it.  The title of the art work is "Coming Home and (Meet Me) At the 
Waterfall".   

Another bright pop of color is "Blue Field Explosions" by Gary Simmons.  Phil shared with us that when Gary was on site for the installation, he was hooked up to a piece of equipment which  lifted him up to the wall.  He took white chalk and began creating the "pop art" style image on the blue background.

Olafur Eliasson, created mobiles titled "Moving stars takes time".  It has a beautiful, almost space themed look about it.

Jim Isermann, installed a large abstract wall relief that is made up all white tiles.  But as one stares at the white tiles you begin to see the undulating movement to the wall.

Another favorite was by Matthew Ritchie, "Line of Play".  It was installed on two opposite side walls plus on the ceiling.  It is mixed medium with aluminum, vinyl and paint.  Can you imagine a coach drawing X"s and O's?  And even though the day was cloudy, was able to get a shot of the ceiling piece reflected on the shiny floor.

ceiling

reflection of the ceiling piece
onto the black shiny floor

Outside is large polished stainless steel disc that is 35 feet in diameter.  The sculpture, "Sky Mirror" was constructed by Anish Kapoor.  The disc sits in a black marble pond of flowing water.  It is so fastancing to watch the Texas sky reflected in the disc.  If you think you have heard the artist's  name before, he is well known for sculpting the "Chicago Bean".  

There are many other pieces of art work to discover at the Stadium.  We had a wonderful time with Phil.  He was so kind to us and shared fun stories about interacting with the artists during the installation of their art works.  Plus he explained how the plan for the art work was to be ingrained within the overall stadium experience.

we may be on the short side but Phil is certainly
way much taller than all of us

The price of the tour is a bit pricey ($26.00)...well, they do have to pay the light bill,  but we saw a lot of interesting things along the way.  It was a  fun adventure.

A separate post will have a few pictures of the inside stadium.