Beauty is in the eye of the beholder for artist Peter Gorman, who has the ability to see beauty where many others only see frustration.
Gorman has focused on Dallas for the latest version of his Barely Maps project, which highlights the intricacies of local traffic patterns in major cities all across the country.
"Dallas has some great intersections, and like many other cities I’ve done, it seems to come from a complicated history of competing urban plans," Gorman noted.
Intersections of Dallas features 20 city intersections which, at first glance, might look less like streets and more like…anything else.
"It kind of looks like an airport runway," said Lucas Smith, of Anchorage, Alaska, who attends the University of Alabama and is interning in Dallas this summer, when asked to describe what he sees in the intersection of Cedar Springs Road, Olive Street and McKinnon Street in Uptown.
"Immediately, when I saw it, it looked like someone doing a cartwheel," said Alexis Hood of Dallas, when she described the same intersection.
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Gorman is publishing a book of intersection art that will be available for sale later this month.
"I think that people have pride in what makes their city unique, even when it’s a series of frustrating intersections," Gorman said. "There’s also something about seeing them in a new, whimsical way."
Use the sliders below to compare a few of Gorman's renderings to the real thing.
Left: Artist Peter Gorman's rendering of the intersection of Cedar Springs Road, Olive Street and McKinnon Street in Uptown, Dallas. Right: Texas Sky Ranger aerial view of the actual intersection.
Left: Artist Peter Gorman's rendering of the intersection of Exposition Avenue, Commerce Street and Canton Street in downtown Dallas. Right: Texas Sky Ranger aerial view of the actual intersection.
Left: Artist Peter Gorman's rendering of the intersection of North Akard Street, Ross Avenue and North Ervay Street in downtown Dallas. Right: Texas Sky Ranger aerial view of the actual intersection.
