Rick Lowe: Facebook.com

Rick Lowe: Facebook.com

Artist Rick Lowe is committed to community improvement through design.In Dallas, he is focused on the Vickery Meadow neighborhood, which is separated from ours by a mere expressway. A community event featuring Lowe is “tentatively slated” for next month.

Lowe is famous for his Project Rowe Houses in Houston, which transformed a violence-ridden and neglected neighborhood into an inviting urban village.

Early this year Lowe partnered with the Nashar Sculpture Center to introduce art, and the cultural transformation it can bring, to one of Dallas’ most troubled neighborhoods, Vickery Meadow.

The announcement garnered loads of love from local media — Observer, Morning News, etc. — which is nice, because the neighborhood more frequently is in the headlines due to shootings and/or botched drug deals.

Although Vickery Meadow (a three-square mile area near Northwest Highway and Central and housing some 36,000 residents) has appeared on the police’s violent-crime hotspots list every year for as long as I’ve covered news in our neighborhood (that would be eight years or so but who’s counting), it has moved down the list from number one to number four.

That’s due to a tremendous effort by an altruistic group of people  — in 2011 we outlined the dramatic efforts of the Vickery Meadow Improvement District to enhance the quality of lives in the area.

A large portion  of the residents of Vickery Meadow, sometimes known as Five Points, are refugees from from Burma, Bhutan and Iraq.

Lowe’s public art project, Trans.lation, will feature a series of pop-up art markets to coincide with the Nasher’s 10th anniversary. Upcoming events are set for for Oct. 19, Nov. 23, Dec. 21, Jan. 18, and Feb. 22 and “will enable the Vickery Meadow community to share their artistic talents and cultural traditions with each other and the greater Dallas community,” organizers say.

A Trans.lation-related community event tentatively is scheduled for next month, according to the VMID newsletter. We will let you know when we learn the exact date.

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Meanwhile, read about more of the exciting contributions Lowe has made to struggling neighborhoods and see (below) what Nashar is planning city wide for its anniversary.