This is the last in a series of posts by enamel artist Kat Cole about a public installation she created at KVO Industries and installed in the Cedars neighborhood in Dallas. This post previously appeared on her blog. Thank you, Kat, for sharing the journey with us!
There is no shortage of things to get done with a project of this size, I am realizing. Once the work was crated up and safely on its way back to Dallas, I spent a few extra days in California with my husband, a brief bit of down time. When I returned,
I unpacked and inspected everything, and made plans for the installation. Scott Shubin , a fellow Dallas artist and very capable art installer, designed and fabricated mounts for the panels. We needed them to secure to the brick and be tamper resistant, just in case.
The wall I had chosen for the site had been in transition over the last couple months. A mural had been painted over the existing graffiti, which had set off a bit of a conflict between the previous and current occupier of the wall space. The result was an odd mix of explicit tags and some efforts to paint over them. Due to this rather less than appealing surface to mount my work, I got permission from the mural artist and collaborated with artist Angela Faz to do a temporary transformation of the wall. The use of old Dallas maps, wheat-pasting, dripping paint, and the previous wall work made a perfect backdrop for my piece.
The install was a smooth and easy process with Scott’s guidance and a little extra help from our friend Bobby Flatt. The final touch was a short chain link fence around the bottom. A common sight in this neighborhood, the chain both helped to frame the piece and detour any overly close encounters from viewers.
Many months of planning and work later, and after many, many words written about it, Project: Crossroads has officially opened and will stay up through the end of 2016. If you are in the Dallas area and want to take a look, the piece is located at 1720 S. Akard Street. Thank you for reading along!
Thanks for sharing the entire process of this great project with us.