Public Arts: Equine Rhythm

Movement is all the more beautiful when it complements the seemingly inert but equally beautiful landscape. Out on the Trinity River corridor, a motion-filled horse kicks up that kind of mutual duality. It’s a new public installation by Atlanta-based sculptor Curtis Patterson that greets visitors to the new Texas Horse Park in southeastern Dallas.

Titled Equine Rhythm, the sculpture made of Corten steel turns reddish-orange in sunlight. It measures 19 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 15 feet long. What’s magical about it, however, is that while weighing in at four tons the geometrical horse shows off four distinct movements common to real horses. Look closely and you’ll see the walk, the trot, the canter, and the gallop. To further evoke the sense of perpetual animal motion, Patterson included elements that symbolize wings, a bass instrument, and even ballet.

Photo credit: Meg Fullwood

“With this sculpture, I have attempted to symbolically capture some of those movements through the use of surface texture, and the assignment of various elements in a rhythmic and balladry pattern within the sculpture composition,” Patterson says.

Movement is not just symbolic, however. The impressive structure comes to the Great Trinity Forest as the first sculpture in the entire massive public works and urban development project now underway.

Photo credit: Meg Fullwood

Equine Rhythm was funded by the City of Dallas Park and Recreation Department and managed by the Office of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program. Additional work by Patterson can be viewed as part of the exhibit “Bayou Sculptors” at the African American Museum of Dallas through December 31.

Texas Horse Park and its front gate sculpture is located at 811 Pemberton Hill Road.  

Steve Freeman, a freelance writer and editor, serves as production manager of Columns.