Jaguar

2001
85’H x 26’W x 26’D
Painted Steel

Hall Corporation Headquarters
Frisco, Texas

Jaguar takes its title from the book, The Quark and The Jaguar, by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Murray Gell-Mann. The author’s ideas prompted John Henry to consider the fusion of masses and the almost crystalline structure of the junctions and joints in this new generation of monumental works with hidden connectors.

Constructed in the Chattanooga studio in 2002, Jaguar was built for John’s New Monuments exhibition at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri where it was exhibited alongside Tatlin’s Sentinel and Zach’s Tower. In addition to these three monumental sculptures, an indoor solo exhibition included models and drawings of other large scale works installed around the country.

The following year, Jaguar was chosen for the eighteen-month long exhibition at the Vancouver Biennale: Open Spaces 2005/2006. Prominently displayed in Devonian Park, the piece was quickly accepted  by Vancouver residents as an addition to the Canadian landscape when they voted it their favorite piece in the biennale exhibition.

At the closing of the exhibition, Jaguar was purchased for inclusion in one of Dallas’s most prominent sculpture collections, that of Craig and Katherine Hall of the Hall financial group. Jaguar’s disassembly was well attended as Vancouver residents gathered for what was both a press conference and wake, complete with Scottish bagpipes, to lament the city’s loss of the cherished monument. Jaguar was moved and reassembled at the Hall World Headquarters in Frisco, Texas where it stands along the Dallas North Tollway.