UPDATE - April 2015: The Tristan Al-Haddad sculpture Allotrope will not be installed at 2100 Ross due to "unforeseen challenges with the fabrication and installation at the building." Instead, a large-scale mural by Texas artist Aaron Parazette will be painted in the lobby off of San Jacinto Street.
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Cousins Properties Incorporated, owner of the high rise 2100 Ross Avenue, had big plans for the building when it announced renovations in May 2013. Although it's taken a bit longer than expected to get everything into place, the company is nearing the finish line in its bid to fit in with the rest of the Dallas Arts District.
The showpiece of the renovations, a magenta steel sculpture by Tristan Al-Haddad now called Allotrope, is scheduled to start installation in late July. The massive pieces, winding around and into the building on both the Ross and San Jacinto Street entrances, should all be in place by September.
Katherine Molyson, development manager for Cousins, says that the need for extra steelwork and the difficulty in finding the ideal steel fabricators are responsible for the project's delay, which was originally scheduled to conclude in March.
However, that sculpture is the lone missing part in this artsy makeover. Anyone who remembers the formerly dark and drab interior will appreciate the bright new lobby, replete with works from artists like Gabriel Dawe, Paul Fleming, Jay Shinn and Kim Cadmus Owens.
Dawe's Plexus C11, the most striking of the interior works, is a towering geometric piece made out of multicolored string occupying a space previously taken up by escalators. Geometry, in fact, is a theme of most of the pieces.
Fleming's three works utilize multiple circles and squares, while Shinn's three paintings incorporate vaguely triangular shapes to evoke different times of day. Owens' two paintings are less geometric but do call to mind road trips in Texas.
2100 Ross is also home to Stephan Pyles' new restaurant, San Salvaje, which opened at the beginning of May. It contains more than a few interesting artworks of its own.
Tristan Al-Haddad's Allotrope, shown here in its ultimate terminus in the 2100 Ross lobby, will be installed starting in July.
