Irwin’s original 1981 sculpture, then called Portal Park Piece (Slice), was removed from its longtime north-south position in the Plaza in 2016 and, steered by the nonprofit group Parks for Downtown Dallas, Irwin, now in his 90s, cut the original piece into more segments, as well as added new segments of filigreed steel, bringing new energy to the sculpture. He then worked with the landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Jones to reconfigure the assembly of forms to sit on an east-west axis. Irwin renamed the work Portal Park Slice. 

At nearly 6 acres, Carpenter Park is soon to be the largest in downtown Dallas, hosting the first ever downtown public basketball court, as well as a water play area, beautifully landscaped native plant life, and access to food trucks. It opens to the public on May 3. 

About the Speakers 

Mary Margaret Jones is President and CEO of Hargreaves Jones, the international landscape architecture and planning firm behind the visionary 2004 Downtown Parks Master Plan and 2013 update that laid the groundwork for transformational Downtown Dallas green spaces. She leads the firm’s offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Cambridge, MA. Mary Margaret has over 30 years of experience, demonstrating the power of investing in the public realm to transform cities, institutions, communities, and individuals. Mary Margaret’s work with Hargreaves Jones has been recognized nationally and internationally, including the prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize.  

Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington, and a Harvard Loeb Fellow. His biography of the late architect Philip Johnson, The Man in the Glass House (Little Brown, 2018), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. 

Lawrence Weschler is the author of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (1981), his mid-career biography of Robert Irwin (originally excerpted in the New Yorker, where he became a staff writer, and then expanded in 2007 to include 30 years of conversations with the artist). Following 15 years as director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU (now emeritus), Weschler's 20th and latest book was And How Are You, Doctor Sacks?, a biographical memoir of his 35-year friendship with the late neurologist Oliver Sacks. Up next, due out later this spring, a true-life comic romp, The Trove of Zohar. 

About Carpenter Park 

Carpenter Park is a 5.75-acre park located at 2201 Pacific Avenue on the eastern edge of Downtown Dallas. The project is an expansion and renovation of Carpenter Plaza, a City of Dallas public park originally built in 1981. The new Carpenter Park embraces neighboring Deep Ellum and helps establish the east-west connection between Old East Dallas and Downtown. This public land has been reimagined into a neighborhood park that welcomes people into Downtown Dallas. Award-winning landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Jones, who authored the 2004 Downtown Parks Master Plan and its 2013 Update, led the design team for the new park which features a broad range of new amenities including a dog play area, basketball court, open and shaded lawns, interactive fountain, environmental play elements for kids, gardens, walking paths, and public art. The new park showcases two significant pieces of public sculpture. Robert Irwin’s Portal Park Piece (Slice) has been reconceptualized and retitled by the artist for the new site conditions in the renovated park. The new title of the sculpture is Portal Park Slice. Robert Berks’ statue of John W. Carpenter has also been reinstalled. Carpenter Park is the third of four Downtown parks to be constructed as a result of a public-private partnership between the Dallas Park and Recreation Department and Parks for Downtown Dallas.