Janet Echelman did not set out to be a sculptor. Now an internally renowned artist whose honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship and top ranking on Oprah Magazine's List of 50 Things that Make You Say Wow!, Echelman began as a painter, traveling to Asia to study calligraphy and batik techniques. It wasn't until a trip to India on a Fulbright Lectureship that she turned to sculpture after her paints were lost in transit from the U.S. "I was forced to embrace what was around me. That just happened to be fishing nets," Echelman says. She began exploring fiber netting as a medium upon observing local fisherman. "The ideas I began working with when I started in Hong Kong studying Chinese calligraphy—of creating visual marks that express movement and gesture—are still central to my work," Echelman explains. "But instead of painting a stroke of pigment onto canvas, I'm now creating a set of points that have the potential for physical gesture in the world, and bringing that to the realm of everyday life at the scale of the city."
Echelman's massive net-based installations transform urban spaces into public art experiences. Her 600-foot aerial sculpture As If It Were Already Here hung over the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston for six months. While huge in scale, the piece was remarkably delicate and subject to environmental influences. This juxtaposition is Echelman's signature—her work is designed to be immersive and nuanced, allowing for viewers to become a part of the art. Her pieces demonstrate the interplay between space, art, and viewer: as the art transforms the space, the viewer imbues and transforms the art with their own unique meaning. It is this interplay that also comes to define Echelman's art as distinctly "public." "I think art in the public sphere is vitally important," she says. "I want my work to be as accessible and free as breathing air."
Echelman's art is also intensely collaborative (a quick scan of existing press turns up the phrases "collective," "team sport," and "colossal choreography," among others). In the course of a single installation, she and her studio team work with engineers, artisans and loom operators, city and public safety officials, and local organizations to determine the scope, design, production, and installation of a piece.