Janet Echelman

Stumbled across this US artist on Lizania Cruz's blog which I follow and Janet Echelman's work blew me away so I went to have a peruse of her website myself :) These are a few of my favourite in her portfolio.

1.26, 2010

 Echelman generally works with polyester or other high tenacity -

1. The quality of bodies which keeps them from parting without considerable force; cohesiveness;
2. The quality of bodies which makes them adhere to other bodies; adhesiveness

 - fibers with gravity and tension to create her suspended sculptures. Mostly she'll create a steel skeleton on which she can then work her fibers. This piece above apparently uses a material called Spectra fiber instead which is 15 times stronger than steel by weight but is really lightweight and low impact so she can temporarily attach her work to buildings in the 'urban airspace' without too many raised eyebrows.

She Changes, 2005

Her Secret is Patience, 2009

She Changes, 2005

Her Secret is Patience, 2009

I was wondering if Echelman uses fibres that illuminate themselves..like optical fibres..but I think that because her work generally features in urban spaces, she can position coloured lighting on the tops of the buildings that surround the sculpture so the colours of the fibres she uses are exaggerated at night. Much cheaper option I suspect :)

Target swooping down...bullseye!, Madrid, Spain, 2001

What I love about Janet Echelman's work is the vibrancy of her colours and how her sculptures seem so fluid and tactile. She has not just thought how it looks as a 3D object but also very carefully and skillfully how it will work in space. Both her colour palette and fluid shapes contrast really well with the dull/cold geometric repeated cityscape surrounding her work. She's transforming the urban space which is seen everyday but goes unnoticed by the public into this out there 'something you'd find in Space if you ever got to go' experience.
I like the way that she is using multiples of fibres (or paralell lines) to create a surface that can be seen through so that from different angles new shapes are seen as these fibres overlap..accidental shapes like a Venn Diagram :)
I'd like to see one in the flesh. I've always been drawn to sculptures and objects which are suspended, I find them calming as if they're floating and could be taken up by the wind at any moment. They also appeal to me because you can almost see and feel gravity; the force which is holding them down. In Echelman's case, her sculptures are held in place by gravity AND tension, so I bet they keep weirdly still, like they've been captured in a photograph. Deep stuff  :) x