Taking imagination seriously Janet Echelman

[Music]

[Music]

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

[Music]

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

[Music]

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