Janet Echelman Talk

American artist Janet Echelman presents ways to harness the creative power of the flexible, the soft and the transparent in cities around the world. Using unlikely materials from fishnet to atomized water particles, her experiential sculptures scale of size of buildings and have become inviting focal points for civic life, combining ancient craft with the newest design and interactive technology. 

Echelman is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship and Fulbright Lectureship. Echelman has been named an “Architectural Digest Innovator” for "changing the very essence of urban spaces." Her TED talk "Taking Imagination Seriously" has been translated into 35 languages with more than one million views. Oprah has ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her “List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!” and she recently received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.”

Janet Echelman Talk

How can we design experiential private and public spaces to embody a spirit of innovation, foster spontaneous communities, and engage viewers in new and powerful ways?

Janet Echelman presents ways to harness the creative power of the flexible, the soft, and the transparent in cities around the world. Her experiential sculptures have become inviting focal points for civic life, combining ancient craft with the newest design and interactive technology. The result is a communal urban experience that is simultaneously virtual and physical.

Echelman’s ingenuity, exuberance, critical eye, and community engagement reminds the design world of America’s long history of creative dynamism, at a time when our ability to project these values carries particular importance.

View Janet Echelman’s Floating Aerial Sculpture, 1.78

August 1 through September 2, 2019

The sculpture is suspended over North Santa Monica Boulevard between The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Beverly Gardens Park

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