Janet Echelman builds living, breathing sculpture environments that respond to the forces of nature — wind, water and light— and become inviting focal points for civic life (+). By doing so, she has been acclaimed by art critics to chart "a bold new direction for sculpture" and her commission She Changes for Portugal has been praised as "one of the truly significant public artworks in recent years. (+)
Bellbottoms Series, 1997 - Mahaballipuram, India,
Bellbottoms Series, 1997 - Mahaballipuram, India
Bellbottoms Series, 1997 - Mahaballipuram, India
Exploring the potential of unlikely materials, from fishing net to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with cutting-edge technology to create her permanent sculpture at the scale of buildings. Experiential in nature, the result is sculpture that shifts from being an object you look at, to something you can get lost in. (+)
Trying to Hide with Your Tail in the Air, 1998 - Vilnius, Lithuania
Philadelphia Project - (UPCOMING) - Philadelphia, PA
Today Echelman has constructed net sculpture environments in metropolitan cities around the world. She sees public art as a team sport and collaborates with a range of professionals including aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, lighting designers, landscape architects, and fabricators. (+)
Red Spikes on 29th Street, 2000, Florence Lynch Gallery, New York City, New York
Kyoto Project, 2001, Honen-In, Buddhist Monastery along Philosopher’s Path, Kyoto, Japan
Target Swooping II, 2001 - Burgos, Spain
Roadside Shrine II, 2002, New York City's West Side Highway, Piers 90 and 88
JE: It was during a trip to India in 1997 as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Painting. I had shipped paints, but as the deadline for my show approached and my paints didn’t, I realized I had a problem. In the meantime, every afternoon I would walk to the beach for a swim and watch the fishermen, fascinated by the way they folded their lengths of net into large volumes. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a different way to approach volume, and I was re-born as a sculptor.
LW: I think of She Changes as the not-Serra, not-monument monument. Do you consider it a feminist work?
JE: Yes. But these days I’m more focused on letting the work grow visually in the physical world, in relationship to architecture and the infrastructure.
LW: What does the title signify?
JE: I like my titles to set up a personal relationship with the viewer. In the past, I’ve used dialogue, as in You appear calm and collected. Here, I wanted to create the sense that the work was personified, so that its relationship with the viewer becomes more like that between two people. I also wanted to highlight the flux in the sculpture’s physical being, which changes at almost every moment, and to open up the possibility of projecting an emotional state onto those changes. A working title was “she changes her mind with the wind,” but in the end, I wanted a more open reading.
LW: Would you discuss the iconography of the image?
JE: I began with the history of the site, a centuries-old fishing village that became an industrial zone in the last few decades. There are references to smokestacks and their red-and-white striped patterns, the angled masts and cables of Portuguese ships, the patterns and forms of fishing nets and Portuguese lace. I focused on making the shape of the wind visible. I call it “wind choreography.” I also refer to a group of ancient life forms that failed around the Pre-Cambrian era, before multi-cellular life developed. Also, I am compelled to keep a hollow core at the center of all my work (read into this as much Buddhism as you like, since I spent most of my 20s in Southeast Asia).
LW: Would you change anything about this piece?
JE: Nothing. The moment we hooked up the last shackle and stood back to look, I was in shock. It was so much more beautiful than anything we were able to render.
Her Secret Is Patience, 2009 - Phoenix, AZ
Water Sky Garden, 2009 - Vancouver, Canada
1.26, 2010 - Denver, CO
Every Beating Second, 2011 - San Francisco, CA
Every Beating Second, 2011 - San Francisco, CA
Tsunami 1.26, 2011 - Sydney, Australia
Tsunami 1.26, an aerial lace installation, was inspired by the 2010 Chile earthquake’s ensuing tsunami and the 1.26-microsecond shortening of the day that resulted from the earthquake’s redistribution of the Earth’s mass. By meditating on these epiphenomena, the work underscores the interdependence of Earth systems and the global community. It asks the viewer to pause and consider the larger fabric of which they are a part.
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