Janet Echelman

American artist Janet Echelman creates experiential sculptures at the scale of buildings that transform with wind and light. The artworks shift from being an object you look at to something you can get lost in. Her work defies categorization as it intersects across disciplinary boundaries, from fine art, architecture, and urban design to material science, computer science, and structural and aeronautical engineering. Using unlikely materials from fishnet to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with original computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents.

Echelman's work was ranked no. 1 on Oprah's "50 Things That Make You Say Wow!" list in 2013. The artist recently received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring the greatest innovators in the U.S. today. Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Loeb Fellowship, Henry Crown Fellowship, and Fulbright Lectureship, Echelman was 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 millions of views.

The artist's newly published monograph by Chronicle Books, Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman, is a 288-page visual compendium of her oeuvre, including detailed project documentation, archival source materials, and an illustrated chronology. The book accompanies a traveling mid-career museum retrospective. Echelman's permanent commissions have featured in urban environments worldwide and include Remembering the Future at the MIT Museum (2025); Butterfly Rest Stop in Frisco, Texas (2024); Current in Columbus, Ohio (2023); Bending Arc at the St. Pete Pier in Florida (2020); Earthtime Korea in South Korea (2020); Pulse at Philadelphia City Hall (2018); Dream Catcher on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, Calif. (2017); Impatient Optimist at the Gates Foundation in Seattle (2015); Every Beating Second at San Francisco International Airport (2011); Her Secret Is Patience in downtown Phoenix, Ariz. (2009); and She Changes in Porto, Portugal (2005).