Taking imagination seriously Janet Echelman
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this story is about taking imaginations
seriously 14 years ago I first
encountered this ordinary material
fishnet used the same way for centuries
today I’m using it to create permanent
billowing voluptuous forms the scale of
hard-edged buildings and cities around
the world I was an unlikely person to be
doing this I never studied sculpture
engineering or architecture in fact
after college I applied to seven art
schools and was rejected by all seven I
went off on my own to become an artist
and I painted for ten years when I was
offered a Fulbright to India promising
to give exhibitions of paintings I
shipped my paints and arrived in
Mahabalipuram the deadline for the show
arrived my paints didn’t I had to do
something this fishing village was
famous for sculpture so I tried bronze
casting but to make large forms was too
heavy and expensive I went for a walk on
the beach watching the fishermen bundle
their nets into mounds in the sand I’d
seen it every day but this time I saw it
differently a new approach to sculpture
a way to make volumetric form without
heavy solid materials my first
satisfying sculpture was made in
collaboration with these fishermen it’s
a self-portrait titled wide hips
we hoisted them on poles to photograph I
discovered their soft surfaces revealed
every ripple of wind in constantly
changing patterns I was mesmerised I
continued studying crafts traditions and
collaborating with artisans next in
Lithuania with lace makers I liked the
fine detail it gave my work but I wanted
to make them larger to shift from being
an object you look at to something you
could get lost in returning to India to
work with those fishermen we made a net
of a million and a half hand tied knots
installed briefly in Madrid thousands of
people saw it and one of them was the
urbanist Manuel Soler Morales who was
redesigning the waterfront in Porto
Portugal he asked if I could build this
as a permanent piece for the city I
didn’t know if I could do that and
preserve my art durable engineered
permanent those are in opposition to
idiosyncratic delicate and ephemeral for
two years I searched for a fiber that
could survive ultraviolet rays salt air
pollution and at the same time remained
soft enough to move fluidly in the wind
we needed something to hold the net up
out there in the middle of the traffic
circle so we raised this 45 thousand
pound steel ring we had to engineer it
to move gracefully in an average breeze
and survive in hurricane winds but there
was no engineering software to model
something porous and moving I found a
brilliant aeronautical engineer who
designed sails for America’s Cup racing
yachts named Peter Heppell he helped me
tackle the twin challenges of precise
shape and gentle movement
I couldn’t build this the way I knew
because hand tied knots weren’t gonna
withstand
hurricane so I developed a relationship
with an industrial fishnet Factory
learned the variables of their machines
and figured out a way to make lace with
them there was no language to translate
this ancient idiosyncratic handcraft
into something machine operators could
produce so we had to create one three
years and two children later we raised
this 50 thousand square-foot lace net it
was hard to believe that what I had
imagined was now built permanent and had
lost nothing in translation this
intersection had been bland and
anonymous now it had a sense of place I
walked underneath it for the first time
as I watched the winds choreography
unfold
I felt sheltered and at the same time
connected to limitless sky my life was
not going to be the same
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I want to create these oases of
sculpture in spaces of cities around the
world I’m going to share two directions
that are new in my work historic
Philadelphia City Hall
it’s Plaza I felt needed a material for
sculpture that was lighter than netting
so we experimented with tiny atomized
water particles to create a dry mist
that is shaped by the wind and in
testing discovered it can be shaped by
people who can interact and move through
it without getting wet I’m using this
sculpture material to trace the paths of
subway trains above-ground in real time
like an x-ray of the city circulatory
system unfolding next challenge the
biennial of the Americas in Denver asked
could i represent the 35 nations of the
Western Hemisphere and their
interconnectedness in a sculpture I
didn’t know where to begin but I said
yes I read about the recent earthquake
in Chile and the tsunami that rippled
across the entire Pacific Ocean it
shifted the Earth’s tectonic plates sped
up the planets rotation and literally
shortened the length of the day so I
contacted NOAA and I asked if they’d
share their data on the tsunami and
translated it into this its title 1.26
refers to the number of microseconds
that the Earth’s day was shortened i
couldn’t build this with a steel ring
the way i knew its shape was too complex
now so i replaced the metal armature
with a soft fine mesh of a fiber 15
times stronger than steel the sculpture
could now be entirely soft which made it
so light it could tie into existing
buildings literally becoming part of the
fabric of the city there was no software
that could
extrude these complex net forms and
model them with gravity so we had to
create it then I got a call from New
York City asking if I could adapt these
concepts to Times Square or the High
Line this new soft structural method
enables me to model these and build
these sculptures at the scale of
skyscrapers they don’t have funding yet
but I dream now of bringing these two
cities around the world where they’re
most needed 14 years ago I search for
beauty in the traditional things in
crafts forms now I combine them with
high-tech materials and engineering to
create voluptuous billowing forms the
scale of buildings my artistic horizons
continue to grow I’ll leave you with
this story I got a call from a friend in
Phoenix an attorney in the office who’d
never been interested in art never
visited the local art museum dragged
everyone she could from the building and
got them outside to lie down underneath
the sculpture there they were in their
business suits lying in the grass
noticing the changing patterns of wind
beside people they didn’t know sharing
the rediscovery of wonder thank you
thank you
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they have names like idle time books and
Panther coffee with free enterprise puns
like hue and cry and smash records and
one Saturday a year
small businesses remind a nation of the
benefits of shopping small like the way
David Kaplan at Shell lumber shows you
how to use a chop saw then invites you
back when the warehouse becomes the
community theater or the way Camille
rustler of Everafter
travels the journey from despair to
bliss with every bride-to-be on just one
day 100 million of us joined a movement
and Main Street found its you might
again and Main Street found its fight
again and we the locals found delight
again that’s the power of all that’s the
power that’s the power of all that’s the
membership effect of American Express
you