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Biography

Through her art, Janet Echelman reshapes urban airspace with monumental public sculptures made of diaphanous, flexible nets that move and change shape through time. In 2007, Janet was selected for two art commissions: the Richmond Oval, a Vancouver 2010 Winter Games venue, and the new Civic Space $2-million art commission in downtown Phoenix. Janet is the only artist among the 2007-08 Loeb Fellows at Harvard University. Her recently completed She Changes, a 160-foot-tall waterfront wind sculpture in Porto, Portugal, received the IFAI International Achievement Award and the Public Art Network's Year in Review Award. Her September 11th Memorial, a new freestanding island in the Hudson River at Hoboken, opens in 2008. Previous work includes solo exhibitions of painting, prints, and sculpture in Venice, Madrid, Bombay, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Kyoto, and New York. Recipient of fellowships from the Aspen Institute, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Japan Foundation, and a Fulbright Lectureship, she currently serves on the national Council of the Public Art Network. After graduating from Harvard College in 1987 with Highest Honors in Visual Studies, she received graduate degrees in painting and in psychology. From 1988-1993, Janet lived as an artist on the island of Bali, Indonesia. She currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband David Feldman and their two children.


Artist Statement

I am a sculptor who shapes urban space. I prefer the immediacy and challenge of transforming sites that are either unnoticed infrastructure that have faded from public memory, or iconic landmarks that have are so overexposed they become habitual background.

For each of my sculpture sites, I consider the visual language and materials of the place, the historical ways of making things, and the current way that people move through the space.

I strive to create living, breathing pieces that respond to and act in unison with the physical environment. My work is often made of flexible, diaphanous materials that allow air currents to move and shape the sculptures with something I call wind choreography. Light, from the sun by day and synthetic by night, projects shadow line drawings on adjoining surfaces, adding another layer of depth and movement. I use these seductive elements to entice passers-by underneath or inside the sculpture's form, making them an active part of the piece rather than discreet viewers of it.