The aesthetic of change

Anna Moldenhauer: The space your sculpture is intended for has a major influence on its final form and colour. What does your research process look like?

Janet Echelman: I look all around me for inspiration – at the forms of our planet in macro and micro scale, to the patterns of life within it, to the measurement of time, weather patterns, or the paths created by fluid dynamics. I am always in search of inspiration from life. I guess this is my way of making sense of the world, and finding my tiny little moment within the larger unfolding story of humanity on our planet. I always turn to the unique site as a guiding force for each artwork. When I make the first site visit, I get a feel for its space and explore its history and texture to understand what it means to its people. I work with my colleagues to brainstorm, sketch, and explore all ideas, without censoring our ideas in the early stages. As the sculpture designs begin to unfold, our studio architects, designers and model-makers collaborate with an external team of aeronautical and structural engineers, computer scientists, lighting designers, landscape architects, and city planners to bring my initial sketches into reality. We fabricate our artworks through a combination of hand splicing and knotting together with industrial looms, and then install on location. It is a gradual, collaborative, and iterative process from every angle, and takes more than a year to go from idea to the final artwork.

The form for Earthtime 1.78 Frankfurt is inspired by environmental data, and is part of an installation part of my Earthtime Series which explores the interconnectedness of the cycles of nature and human interaction. These sculptures are transformed by wind and light, reminding ourselves that we are just one knot in an interconnected web of time and space. During my research about Frankfurt, I learned there are 178 nationalities which comprise the vibrant metropolis, so I felt the data set related to the Earth’s shortening of a day by 1.78 microseconds seemed to speak directly to Frankfurt.

Air and light bring the net sculptures to life. In public spaces, you cannot influence the weather. How do you take this into account in your work?

Janet Echelman: My sculptures are alive in constant transformation, because they change with every movement of the wind and gradual changes of light and shadow. My art shifts from being an object you look at, to something you can get lost in, inviting viewers into immersive experiences rather than static observation. In creating work to be installed in climates with potentially extreme weather conditions, I find that forms that are able to fluidly and gracefully adapt to changing circumstances are the most successful. They’re soft and flexible, able to yield with changing conditions – strength gained through resiliency, not brute force. We’ve had to find new kinds of fibers to meet the demands of nature, and are using a variety of high-tech fibers. One structural fiber I use is 15 times stronger than steel and impervious to UV from the sun’s rays, high temperatures, pollution, and even chemical reactions – all while remaining strong and ultra-lightweight. We select different fiber types depending on the role they play in the sculpture, whether it is for structural strength or for expressiveness of color. Constraints can push creativity. I design art to withstand typhoon winds, ice, and snow. I try to approach these design challenges and solutions as features rather than artistic limitations.

What was important to you in creating ‘Earthtime 1.78 Frankfurt’ as part of the World Design Capital programme 2026?

Janet Echelman: This work I’m creating for "Konsti" (Konstablerwache) is about multiple strands of color interwoven with each other, moving in harmony with nature. So this seems to be very compatible with the theme of "Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a Better Life." The square at Konstablerwache has a multilayered history and present usage. It is active only on the two market days. Local residents told me it feels empty the rest of the time, and that they sometimes feel unsafe during the days it’s deserted. I know from past experience that a site-specific artwork can bring intentionality and activity to empty urban space which can create a measurable change in safety. Additionally, because of my own personal Jewish ancestry, I find it especially meaningful to be joining with my German colleagues in bringing new life and color to an important urban square that was severely damaged in the second World War and rebuilt, where its pre-war historic texture and patina were replaced by unadorned Brutalist grey concrete.  This project leaves me feeling like we’re brothers and sisters working together to create a better life for all.

An Aero-computing software was developed specifically for your sculptures. How does this help you in your creative process?

Janet Echelman: My studio has spent the past fifteen years working with computer scientists and engineers across the globe to create custom software design tools that allows us to perform soft-body 3D modeling and analysis of our monumental designs. We need accurate 3D digital models for our engineers to analyze the forces of gravity, wind, snow, and ice in order to confirm safety and obtain building permits. We also use our digital tools to understand the aesthetics of color, pattern, and form within the urban context. Our physical sculptures utilize hand-made craftsmanship using very old technologies, like braiding, knotting, and splicing of fiber and ropes. In the end, part of the meaning of these works is an integration of human past, present, and future, where digital tools are used in the service of creating a better human life.

You collaborate with interdisciplinary experts, and your lead engineer is also a sculptor. How does this influence your artistic approach to a project?

Janet Echelman: As my projects have increased in scale to skyscrapers and city blocks, I keep encountering terrifying challenges. Collaboration is how I get through these things – reaching out to colleagues in other fields who are experts in engineering, lighting design, landscape, and architecture. Collaboration is the life blood of my joy, and being able to work with so many talented individuals expands the language with which I can speak as an artist. I am always learning from colleagues, and what we create together is definitely greater than what I could create myself. 

You use a variety of different fibre types in each sculpture, depending on the function of the component and the harshness of the climate. How do you determine which fibre is suitable?

Janet Echelman: There are formidable engineering challenges to all my large-scale work in relation to the forces of wind and weather, which my global team has been working to address using new lightweight materials and methods for more than two decades. For example, we use a fiber that is fifteen times stronger than steel (used in outer space by NASA to tether the Mars Rover). There are additional challenges unique to Konsti, because we have to weave our structural foundations into an active market square which sits narrowly above a subway station. If this were on open land, it would be easy to pour deep concrete foundations to enable us to withstand strong wind forces across a large netted sculpture, but in Konsti, our brilliant German engineering team has come up with new solutions to create an elegant structure. 

With your sculptures, you create a new quality of space in the respective rooms. Your works reveal a use that we had not previously perceived in this location. How do you determine the size of the sculpture in relation to architecture and people?

Janet Echelman: To create something at the scale of a public space like Konsti, with intense engineering challenges, I need to do intensive planning. I need to follow construction documents that we create, which are reviewed by the city for safety, for example. So some things are given up, like the spontaneity of creation. But I believe that the spontaneity of the aesthetics is retained. And I think it’s an equation that I like the outcome, because being able to share it at the scale of a city, at the height that can be over all of our heads together – whether the market is there or it’s a regular day – I think that expansion of scale expands the potential for what the art can be. So, of course, I give up some craftsmanship spontaneity, but I think the overall outcome is worth it. 

The inspiration for the net sculptures came to you when you saw fishing nets in India after your painting supplies were lost. Can you explain this development more?

Janet Echelman: I was a young painter when I travelled on a Fulbright Scholarship to India. Promising to give painting exhibitions around the country on behalf of the US Embassy, I shipped my special paints and equipment to create the new paintings. The deadline for the shows arrived – but my paints did not. I was in a terrible bind, with no materials to make my art. I was staying in a South Indian fishing village, and each afternoon I walked the long beach, watching the fishermen bundling their nets into mounds on 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 sculptures were hand-crafted net forms in collaboration with those fishermen. I brought them to the beach and lifted them into the air to photograph them. It was then that I discovered their soft surfaces revealed every ripple of wind in constantly changing patterns and was mesmerized, and I’ve never turned back.

You believe that art can be a catalyst for change and should not be separated from life. The ‘Patterns of Life’ are also part of your work. What needs to be in place for art to fulfil this?

Janet Echelman: It is a scientifically proven fact that our visual physical context can affect how we feel. It influences how we experience our lives. The way our cities look and function results from the way people choose to build them, and I believe that collectively we have the power to build them differently. My artwork brings an experience of softness to the scale of the city. It is a counterpoint to the hard edges of buildings. My approach to public space is to bring our eyes up to the sky and to let nature be the animating force of my work. It is always changing and it’s more interesting than any pattern I could create. 

While preparing for this interview, I read that your interest in how space influences your feelings and thus your self-image at any given moment led you to art. Now you influence space and how we feel in it. What emotion is important for you to evoke?

Janet Echelman: Interconnectedness. If you focus your attention on a single knot in the sculpture, you will see how even a slight shift in its location impacts the movement of every other knot in the sculpture. The choreography of nature and its shifting patterns of wind and light result in an everchanging, living artwork of human creation in harmony with the forces of our planet and one another. This reimagining of a Brutalist architectural square with color and fluid movement becomes proof that the status quo can be changed, that we don’t have to accept the built environment as it is, but can transform it. My hope is that the fact that we can transform a single place might open up an expansion of thinking about the possibilities of reimagining our shared physical world.

Your interests as a young person were wide-ranging; you would have liked to become the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, as a teenager you were a piano soloist with the Florida Orchestra. You studied at Harvard and devoted yourself to psychology and painting. How does this diverse path influence your artistic work today?

Janet Echelman: This career is only for those who cannot bear the thought of doing something else. Once I made my peace with the fact that the life of an artist – with all its challenges and difficulties - was one I couldn’t live without, I could accept the hardship, without expectation of success. The key for me was to carve out enough time to learn to hear and develop my own voice as an artist. That is an ongoing experience. I am still trying to set new challenges and explore things I don’t know how to do. I need to keep myself on the edge artistically. Making my first sculptures was terrifying. I really had no experience or skill sculpting, and I’m not one of those people who’s naturally handy at making things. I had to face my fear. As my projects have increased in scale to skyscrapers and city blocks, I keep encountering terrifying challenges. Collaboration is how I get through these things – reaching out to colleagues in other fields who are experts in engineering, lighting design, landscape, and architecture. Collaboration is the life blood of my joy, and being able to work with so many talented individuals expands the language with which I can speak as an artist. I am always learning from colleagues, and what we create together is definitely greater than what I could create myself. 

You have taught at MIT, Harvard and Princeton, among others. What is important to you to pass on to the next generation?

Janet Echelman: Public recognition of my art has only come recently and I never counted on it. My advice to students is to try to pick something which fascinates you, something you enjoy so much that you won’t mind practicing for a very long time even if public praise never comes. I think we censor our vision and our dreams too much, and I still have to remind myself frequently to quiet the voice of the internal critic and avoid making compromises too soon.