Artist couple making a mark in Dallas, both as a team and on their own
Frances Bagley and Tom Orr worked jointly on “Forest of Light” at UT Southwestern, and they have individual projects at Barry Whistler Gallery.
On the rooftop of a parking garage in the Dallas Medical District is a forest unlike any other.
Featuring 57 colorful, powder-coated steel poles and 23 LED poles, Forest of Light is a sculptural installation created by Dallas artists Frances Bagley and Tom Orr.
Commissioned by UT Southwestern Medical Center, the forest took two years to design and fabricate and a month to install, requiring thoughtful collaboration and coordination among the artists and numerous other people: UTSW curator Courtney Crothers, architects, engineers, contractors and fabricators.
Although Bagley and Orr are best known as individual artists, the pair, who have been married for over 30 years, occasionally collaborate on public projects — most notably Wildlife Water Theatre, which graced the shoreline of White Rock Lake for over a decade before being decommissioned by the city in 2015.