Patrick Dougherty, a North Carolina-based artist, is known for creating whirling quasi-architectural sculptures from locally-harvested saplings. In January 2014, Dougherty and a team of Hermann Park Conservancy volunteers constructed the site-specific installation Boogie Woogie in Hermann Park. Installation took place over a period of three weeks using 6 tons of harvested saplings -- mostly invasive Chinese tallow -- gathered from Generation Park, a master-planned enterprise development in northeast Houston. Volunteers worked under the close direction of the artist and his assistant throughout the project. The project required over 150 volunteers and more than 1,000 volunteer hours to complete. This piece was inspired by the nearby Hermann Park Japanese Garden and can be explored through the passageways of the “glyph maze” and the “walls” that make up the piece. Dougherty has completed over 230 works in his career with installations throughout the United States and around the world. 

Find Boogie Woogie near the entrance to the Japanese Garden and the Pioneer Memorial obelisk between McGovern Lake and the Jones Reflection Pool.  

Despite the organic nature of the material, the installation will remain on view for several years before being dismantled.

Recently introduced to American audiences, Mexican sculptor Yvonne Domenge is influenced by mathematics, physics, the natural world, and the traditional art of Mexico. Wind Waves is a Ferrari-red painted steel orb weighing close to 6 tons, and, like most of her work, draws on organic, curvilinear forms. Her work has been exhibited widely internationally, and was recently exhibited at Millennium Park in Chicago and in the Vancouver Biennale.

The sculpture is located on the triangular grassy median east of the Sam Houston Monument near the Montrose entrance to the Park. Wind Waves will be on view in Hermann Park through January 2015.

For more on Yvonne, click here to read Claudia Feldman's article in the Houston Chronicle from October 2013.

New York-based Orly Genger has re-worked a previous piece for the Park’s new landscaping alongside Brays Bayou near the Bill Coats Bridge. An emerging talent, Genger has garnered attention for her large-scale constructions of brightly painted, knotted nautical rope. Spanning the genres of craft and fine art, Genger mines the intimate, domestic, and traditionally feminine practice of knitting to create sprawling, monumental installations. With the help of assistants, Genger looms, crochets, weaves, and knots heavy twine over the course of many months to create a single work. 

The installation in Hermann Park, which is made of knotted climbing rope, sits on the banks of Brays Bayou on the Bayou Parkland side of Hermann Park between South MacGregor Way and Almeda. Measuring 225 feet long by 17 feet wide and painted in a wide range of colors including Eggnog, Springtime Bloom, Limeade, and many more, Boys Cry Too seems to pop off of the Park's terrain. Boys Cry Too will be on view through March 2015.

Genger's work has recently been exhibited at Madison Square Park and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in New York, and has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Upcoming installations include a work for The Contemporary Austin that will be sited at Laguna Gloria. 

Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock has transformed the interior walls of Hermann Park Railroad's train tunnel into a fantastical landscape populated with creatures both real and imagined. Destination Mound Town is a contribution to Hancock’s ongoing narrative in his artwork of the Mounds, a group of mythical half-animal, half-plant characters. Train passengers will be transported into a day in the life of the Mounds, beginning the journey as they arise in morning and exiting the tunnel as they settle in for the night. To view the installation, hop on the Hermann Park Railroad at Kinder Station, or at any of the remote stops,  and keep your eyes open as you enter the tunnel. For hours and information on the Hermann Park Railroad, visit the Train information page. 

The recipient of numerous awards, Hancock lives and works in Houston, where he was a 2002 Core Artist in Residence at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Museum of Art; Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Hancock’s first retrospective exhibition will be on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston beginning in April 2014. 

Please note: there is no safe pedestrian access into the train tunnel. The work is only visible by train.

Louise Bourgeois, considered one of the most prominent female artists of the 20th century, explores her personal fears and life experiences through her artwork. Beginning in 1984 until her death in 2010, Bourgeois developed a rich body of work around the spider, from delicate works on paper to colossal installations. From a family of weavers, Bourgeois employs the spider as a maternal figure: looming, protective, and nurturing. Spider appears to delicately float above the waters of the Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Reflection Pool as she keeps watch over the grounds of Hermann Park.

Spider will be on view through August 1, 2014.

A former Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Core Fellow and a resident of Houston for many years, Sharon Engelstein is known for her organic, bubbly sculptural forms. In Hermann Park, a grand Mamadillidiida figure looms protectively over her wandering brood of smaller Dillidiidae. Though not immediately recognizable, the Dillidiidae are identical quadruplets. Curiously familiar, these tumbling forms invite interactivity, creating a game of delight and discovery. 

The Dillidiidae are located on the grassy berm near the Buddy Carruth Playground for All Children and the intersection of Fannin and Cambridge Streets. 

Dillidiidae will be on view through April 2017. 

The University of Houston ReFRAME x FRAME micro pavilion is a collaboration between professors in the University of Houston Graduate Design/Build Studio in the College of Architecture, the Graphic Communications Program in the School of Art, and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. This project demonstrates principles of sustainable design and construction through the use of Allsteel frames which are commonly used as office cubicles. In this case, the Allsteel frames are used as a prototype for prefabricated deployable building systems that can be easily packed and shipped to use as tempory housing in disaster relief settings. The structure incorporates lighted elements on one exterior wall, solar panels for sunlight collection, a rain water collection system and water barrel, and an expandable floor plan to create space for storage, sleeping, showering, and working with the addition of optional walls. The steel frames from Allsteel office panel systems exceed the durability and strength of most residential framing systems, are cost effective, and versatile making these structures ideal for tremporary housing.

Within the structure, artist Abinadi Meza has created a motion-triggered sound installation based on environmental data collected from Hermann Park. The "ambient/sonic/weather station" is a generative/interactive sound installation based on various data streams from the environment, such as air temperature, humidity, soil temperature, barometric pressure, animal and plant movements, and flowing waterways. These sounds emanate from the structure as bleeps, roars, whirrs, blips, hisses, cracks and shuffles, allowing visitors to focus on layers of information we don't normally hear, as ephemeral phenomena such as light or heat are generating the sounds. The sound installation is motion-activated.

The pavilion will be on view through January 2015 and is located on the north side of the Tiffany Bridge near the pedal boat lagoon.

Hermann Park, Rice University, and The Texas Medical Center have shared a long neighboring relationship in Houston. Their paths come together at a small triangular site where the Rice Building Workshop proposes a pavilion in honor of the Park’s Centennial Celebration.

Situated within four existing trees, the pavilion is composed of a quadrilateral ground plane containing integrated benches and, rotated above the base, a triangular frame. The cast concrete benches for seating are engineered to act as foundation elements (taking the place of costly and invasive footings). The triangulated steel structure is designed to provide a rigid framework and to visually extend into the lower tree canopy. The infill of woven cord gives a sense of enclosure and operates as an ephemeral scrim to the larger site beyond.

The project as a whole offers a rich collaboration between Rice University School of Architecture and the Hermann Park Conservancy. Students in the Rice Building Workshop will have the opportunity to transform a design idea into a built project that will be enjoyed by the Houston community over the year-long installation at Hermann Park. After the installation, the building components can be re-assembled at a site on the Rice campus. 

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Cece and Mack Fowler
Barbara and Michael Gamson
The Hearst Foundations
Bunny and Perry Radoff

Chinhui and Eddie Allen
Franci and Jim Crane
The Cullen Foundation
The John R. Eckel, Jr. Special Purpose Trust
Marita and J.B. Fairbanks
Linda and George Kelly
Sara and Bill Morgan
The Sarofim Foundation
Leslie and Shannon Sasser
Judy and Charles Tate
The Susan Vaughan Foundation, Inc.

Anchorage Foundation of Texas
Bank of America
Melanie Gray and Mark Wawro
Steppie and Robert Holsclaw
Houston Arts Alliance
City of Houston
Kathrine G. McGovern
Judy and Scott Nyquist
Ann and Don Short

Jan and Jack Cato
Jereann Chaney
Sara Paschall Dodd
Cynthia and Ben Guill
Elizabeth and Albert Kidd
Gary Mercer
Rowan Companies, Inc.
Hinda Simon
Leigh and Reggie Smith
Cassie B. Stinson

Kate Criner Bellin and Andy Bellin
Kristen and David Buck
Liz and Steve Crowell
Susan and Mac Dunwoody
Guy Hagstette and Douglas Lawing
Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund
Page Kempner
Carla Knobloch
Karol Kreymer and Robert Card, M.D.
Margaret L. Kripke and Isaiah J. Fidler
Charley Landgraf
Marc C. Melcher
Sandra and Kenneth Moffet
Terrylin G. Neale
Carol and David Neuberger
Marilyn Oshman
Winifred Kelsey Riser
Emily Leland Todd
Martha Turner Properties, Inc.
Renee Wallace
Lea Weingarten

Special thanks: Audi Central Houston, Brochsteins, Generation Park, Houston Chronicle, Houston Parks and Recreation Department, United Airlines, Weingarten Art Group, and W.S. Bellows Construction