Location: Cypress, Texas
Completion Date: Spring 2019
Earthscape Describes the project as : The master-planned community of Bridgeland on the north-west side of Houston is peacefully situated among lakes, rivers and trails. That natural beauty informed the creation the wetland-themed play space of Dragonfly Park at the development’s amenities center, designed collaboratively by Clark Condon and Earthscape.
The completely custom and unique central feature of the playground is an enormous dragonfly sculpture that stretches 10.5 metres (34 feet) across its wing span. The dragonfly’s body is a combination of chainsaw carved oak and sculptural form and cladding. The four wings each offer different play and climbing opportunities. The dragonfly sits among additional playable elements that reflect the ecosystem of a dragonfly, including tall grasses and plants.
Social Media Posts
Together Jacob and Paul Frenette father son team used their chainsaw skills to bring the dragonfly to life out of the old oak. below we have a collection of our live video and posts we published on our social media during the making of the project.
What Making the Project was Like
This project was rather complicated given we had to make the dragon fly tail over a curved surface and as you know logs dont generally grow that big in that way. So we had to shape each log to match the curve. We used cutting techniques to get the right angles matching across the rising concave curve then slotted each piece to hide the joinery and add to the scale effect of the tail. Overall it was a very fun project that tested certain skills like proportion, joinery, angled precision cuts, texture etc and artistic flow needed to have the head of the dragon fly look good, be fun to play on and not be too scary for the kids.