Artists Making a Kinder World

Piece 24 & Piece 10

Piece 24

"Make My Hands Respect the Things

You Have Made"

29 Pieces’ first major public sculpture, thematically based on a line from Native American poem, Let Me Walk in Beauty. A team of 15 Dallas high school students worked under the apprenticeship of master mosaic artists Nancy Pollock and Julie Richey and steel artist Albert Scherbarth to conceptualize, design and construct the sculpture. The 17-foot sculpture features a mosaic hand invoking both Native American totems and ancient Christian reliquaries. It stands as a communal symbol of respect and compassion.

The Dallas Public Art Committee and Office of Cultural Affairs unanimously approved the adoption of the sculpture, and 29 Pieces unveiled it on December 17, 2016 in a public ceremony celebrating its permanent home on Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff.

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Piece 10

29 Pieces and the South Dallas Cultural Center brought a team of 12 African-American middle and high school students from Southeast Dallas neighborhoods together with six local artists including Darryl Ratcliff, Vicki Meek, Diana Chase, Joe Stokes, Constance White, and Karen Blessen to produce the human-scale glass sculpture that is “Piece 10: Souls Hidden.” This piece takes inspiration from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s poem, “Radiant is the World Soul.”

In conceptualizing this sculpture, students contemplated the cultural legacies of Harlem Renaissance artists and South Dallas Cultural Center luminaries – how their souls may be hidden, but their vitality among us remains very much alive. Their interpretation shines through the colorful patterns in the glass, representing the individuality of each soul. The translucence of the glass, reflecting and channeling light, infuses the sculpture with ethereality.

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