Kaleidoscope Park is a place where nature meets culture and art abounds.
This 6-acre dynamic, innovative arts and culture destination is currently under construction in Frisco, Texas. The Park will be home to free, year-round public programming, including films, diverse musical and dance performances, and a variety of health and recreational activities. The Park will feature monumental works of public art, architecture, and gardens set among a children’s play area, dog park, performance lawn, outdoor workspaces, and shaded promenades and plazas. Learn more at kaleidoscopepark.org.
Located adjacent to HALL Park’s Texas Sculpture Garden, Kaleidoscope Park’s centerpiece will be the captivating work Butterfly Rest Stop - one of the largest outdoor public art installations in Texas. Created by world-renowned sculpture and fabric artist Janet Echelman, the magnificent art will hang overhead in the Park’s Arts Plaza. The butterfly theme highlights the area as an important corridor for the monarch butterfly’s migration.
Butterfly Rest Stop explores the interconnectedness of humans and nature in the public sphere. Butterflies and other pollinators play an important role in Earth's ecosystem, but monarch numbers have declined in recent years due to the loss of milkweed along their migratory routes that pass through Frisco each year. The design of Butterfly Rest Stop echoes the forms, patterns and colors of milkweed flowers. Made of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers like those used by NASA to tether the Mars Rover, the sculpture is comprised of two five-petaled forms that float gently in the air. The intricately designed work uses nearly 90 miles of fiber to create the 165-foot-long span. To further the pollinator message, native milkweed has been added to the Park’s Arts Plaza to welcome monarch butterflies to the Park.
Echelman is known for creating large-scale artworks that transform with wind and light, changing shape and color in response to the forces of nature. Her works have been displayed in Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, Santiago, Beijing, Boston, New York and London. Butterfly Rest Stop is Echelman’s first permanent Texas art installation.
Butterfly Rest Stop by the numbers:
791,788 knots tied by hand and by loom
88.9 miles twine in netting
3,423 lbs weight of sculpture
165 ft length of total sculpture (including rope structure)
133 ft length of sculpture net
65 ft highest point
106 mph design wind load
9,090 sf projected area of net in plan
3,967 sf surface area of netting