As part of the Conservancy's Art in the Park program, alongside the opening of the Commons, Texas native Anthony Suber was commissioned to create a piece for the Park. Installed in June 2024, Canopy is a metal and glass structure in the form of an enlarged, abstract monstera plant that encourages the viewer to engage and sit underneath the canopy it creates. The design references "deconstructed sacred geometry," using the three-sided form of a triangle, connecting to the ideas of enlightenment and spiritual harmony.

Canopy symbolizes the physical and spiritual, while also representing a multigenerational conversation in how burgeoning generations sprout from the foundation of their ancestors in a continuous cycle. Concurrently, it represents an arc from childhood to the eventual return to the earth below in a physical sense.

Each leaf doubles as an enlarged geometric mask that from the outside utilizes strong diagonals to form intersecting triangles and a mix of reinterpreted sacred geometric forms. The inside of each leaf form, made from color-shifting dichroic glass, reflects the surrounding environment with the intention of creating a small visual sanctuary of light, but it most importantly reflects the viewer. The reflective interior of the structure contrasts the cast shadows around Canopy depending on the time of day. The concrete foundation of Canopy is the shape of the predominant geometric "leaf masks" of the structure, and it is a homage to the ancestors and the base of their collective memory.

You can find Canopy in the Commons, located on Bob and Elsa's Memorial Art Grove which is adjacent to the Japanese Garden's west entrance. Please find a map here for the location.

Suber is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in Southeast Texas. He received a BFA from the University of Houston and completed his MFA at Houston Christian University. Throughout his career, Suber has exhibited work and produced multi-tiered activations both nationally and abroad. Suber is a professor of art with the Kathrine G. McGovern College at University of Houston's School of Art and an artist-in-residence with Project Row Houses in Houston's historic Third Ward community.

Canopy is generously supported by Ellen Benninghoven and Michael Schafer, in loving memory of Ellen's parents, Bob and Elsa Kaim, and their lifelong dedication to the arts and social justice. Their legacy lives on with their children.

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.

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Melanie Gray and Mark Wawro
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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