Sculptor Janet Echelman
Sculptor merges engineering and art to conjure connections among people and nature
Artist Janet Echelman thinks big. One of her recent installations is a 229-foot-long mesh sculpture suspended over a downtown intersection in Columbus, Ohio—the largest public artwork in the city’s history. Unveiled in June 2023 and titled Current, it sweeps down from its highest perch more than 120 feet above the ground into a series of cascading forms that look like complicated waves. It’s large enough that it can be viewed from below, by pedestrians, or from above, by passengers in airplanes. At night, it glows red and blue. Current is not Echelman’s largest, however. It’s outdone by Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks, which she installed in 2015 over Vancouver. Her first big-scale permanent sculpture, She Changes, was installed in a small town north of Porto, Portugal, in 2005 and measures 300 feet long.
Read more at PNAS, here: doi:10.1073/pnas.2315793120