Alyson Shotz is an American sculptor living in Brooklyn, New York. Shotz is known for large-scale sculptures that subvert their own physicality in order to explore the phenomenological experience of space, gravity, light and matter. 

Hermann Park Conservancy commissioned Shotz to create a new sculpture for Hermann Park to kick off a re-energized Art in the Park program alongside the opening of the Commons. Installed in April 2024, the new 16-foot high sculpture: Scattering Surface is named for a phenomenon of light itself.  It refers to cosmological theory about the first light of the universe that is visible to us.

The sculpture is composed of thousands of welded stainless steel circles, which reflect light and scatter the visible surroundings into tiny pieces, shifting and moving across the sculpture like an analog screen. The play between the reflections and the spaces between reflections draws attention to the idea of solidity itself as the sculpture creates an optical continuum where negative and positive space continually intertwine.

In Scattering Surface, Shotz is looking at large-scale steel sculpture in a different way. Instead of creating a solid and heavy welded piece, she has created something light - air flows through it and the steel almost seems translucent.

You can find Scattering Surface in the quiet area between the Japanese Garden, McGovern Lake, and the pedestrian island and bridge. Please find a map here for the location. Scattering Surface is a temporary exhibition on display through 2026.

Shotz’s work is included in numerous public collections, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Guggenheim Bilbao, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and Storm King Art Center among others.

Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery, New York.

Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock has transformed the interior walls of Hermann Park Railroad's train tunnel into a fantastical landscape populated with creatures both real and imagined. Destination Mound Town is a contribution to Hancock’s ongoing narrative in his artwork of the Mounds, a group of mythical half-animal, half-plant characters. Train passengers will be transported into a day in the life of the Mounds, beginning the journey as they arise in morning and exiting the tunnel as they settle in for the night. To view the installation, hop on the Hermann Park Railroad at Kinder Station, or at any of the remote stops,  and keep your eyes open as you enter the tunnel. For hours and information on the Hermann Park Railroad, visit the Train information page. 

The recipient of numerous awards, Hancock lives and works in Houston, where he was a 2002 Core Artist in Residence at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Museum of Art; Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Hancock’s first retrospective exhibition will be on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston beginning in April 2014. 

Please note: there is no safe pedestrian access into the train tunnel. The work is only visible by train.

A former Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Core Fellow and a resident of Houston for many years, Sharon Engelstein is known for her organic, bubbly sculptural forms. In Hermann Park, a grand Mamadillidiida figure looms protectively over her wandering brood of smaller Dillidiidae. Though not immediately recognizable, the Dillidiidae are identical quadruplets. Curiously familiar, these tumbling forms invite interactivity, creating a game of delight and discovery. 

The Dillidiidae are located on the grassy berm near the Buddy Carruth Playground for All Children and the intersection of Fannin and Cambridge Streets. 

Dillidiidae was on display until April 2022. 

New York-based Orly Genger re-worked a previous piece for the Park’s new landscaping alongside Brays Bayou near the Bill Coats Bridge. An emerging talent, Genger has garnered attention for her large-scale constructions of brightly painted, knotted nautical rope. Spanning the genres of craft and fine art, Genger mines the intimate, domestic, and traditionally feminine practice of knitting to create sprawling, monumental installations. With the help of assistants, Genger looms, crochets, weaves, and knots heavy twine over the course of many months to create a single work. 

The installation in Hermann Park, made of knotted climbing rope, sat on the banks of Brays Bayou on the Bayou Parkland side of Hermann Park between South MacGregor Way and Almeda. Measuring 225 feet long by 17 feet wide and painted in a wide range of colors including Eggnog, Springtime Bloom, Limeade, and many more, Boys Cry Too seemed to pop off of the Park's terrain. 

Genger's work has recently been exhibited at Madison Square Park and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in New York, and has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Upcoming installations include a work for The Contemporary Austin that will be sited at Laguna Gloria. 

Boys Cry Too was on view through March 24, 2015.

Patrick Dougherty, a North Carolina-based artist, is known for creating whirling quasi-architectural sculptures from locally-harvested saplings. In January 2014, Dougherty and a team of Hermann Park Conservancy volunteers constructed the site-specific installation Boogie Woogie in Hermann Park. Installation took place over a period of three weeks using 6 tons of harvested saplings -- mostly invasive Chinese tallow -- gathered from Generation Park, a master-planned enterprise development in northeast Houston. Volunteers worked under the close direction of the artist and his assistant throughout the project. The project required over 150 volunteers and more than 1,000 volunteer hours to complete. This piece was inspired by the nearby Hermann Park Japanese Garden and can be explored through the passageways of the “glyph maze” and the “walls” that make up the piece. Dougherty has completed over 230 works in his career with installations throughout the United States and around the world. 

Boogie Woogie was on display through September 2015.

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Cece and Mack Fowler
Barbara and Michael Gamson
The Hearst Foundations
Bunny and Perry Radoff

Chinhui and Eddie Allen
Franci and Jim Crane
The Cullen Foundation
The John R. Eckel, Jr. Special Purpose Trust
Marita and J.B. Fairbanks
Linda and George Kelly
Sara and Bill Morgan
The Sarofim Foundation
Leslie and Shannon Sasser
Judy and Charles Tate
The Susan Vaughan Foundation, Inc.

Anchorage Foundation of Texas
Bank of America
Melanie Gray and Mark Wawro
Steppie and Robert Holsclaw
Houston Arts Alliance
City of Houston
Kathrine G. McGovern
Judy and Scott Nyquist
Ann and Don Short

Jan and Jack Cato
Jereann Chaney
Sara Paschall Dodd
Cynthia and Ben Guill
Elizabeth and Albert Kidd
Gary Mercer
Rowan Companies, Inc.
Hinda Simon
Leigh and Reggie Smith
Cassie B. Stinson

Kate Criner Bellin and Andy Bellin
Kristen and David Buck
Liz and Steve Crowell
Susan and Mac Dunwoody
Guy Hagstette and Douglas Lawing
Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund
Page Kempner
Carla Knobloch
Karol Kreymer and Robert Card, M.D.
Margaret L. Kripke and Isaiah J. Fidler
Charley Landgraf
Marc C. Melcher
Sandra and Kenneth Moffet
Terrylin G. Neale
Carol and David Neuberger
Marilyn Oshman
Winifred Kelsey Riser
Emily Leland Todd
Martha Turner Properties, Inc.
Renee Wallace
Lea Weingarten

Special thanks: Audi Central Houston, Brochsteins, Generation Park, Houston Chronicle, Houston Parks and Recreation Department, United Airlines, Weingarten Art Group, and W.S. Bellows Construction