Eat a Peach: Mitchell Rasansky's Favorite Public Art Piece Set For September 30 Bow

By Robert Wilonsky Wed., Sep. 9 2009 at 11:00 AM

Categories: News

Art Garcia's Farmers Market Shed No. 2 Peaches, set to debut by month's end

Back in May, when the Dallas City Council was starting to tackle the city's $190-million budget deficit, then-council member Mitchell Rasansky made it clear he was very unhappy with the city's having spent $18,000 on fiberglass peaches scheduled to be installed at Dallas Farmers Market as part of a public art initiative. Said Rasansky, in case you missed the point, "F-I-B-E-R-G-L-A-S-S P-E-A-C-H-E-S. All this stuff starts adding up, and now we're having to pay the piper."

Turns out, those peaches are finally ripe: Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the city's Public Art Committee was meeting at City Hall, and, per the agenda, the peaches will take root on September 30. I asked Kay Kallos -- the former director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center who's now Dallas's Public Art Program Manager -- if we could take a sneak peek at the finished product. She has some work-in-progress photos, but artist Art Garcia -- the visual designer also working on the Bishop Arts Public Art Project -- didn't think them ready for public consumption, so Kallos sent along this conceptual rendering instead. Incidentally, if you want a preview of the other public art being prepped -- including the Main Street Garden Shelter being designed by Leni Schwendinger and set to make its official bow November 5 -- that's but a click away.

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