Janet Echelman: Radical Softness

Internationally recognized artist Janet Echelman will present her groundbreaking work, which seamlessly merges sculpture, architecture, and urban design with fields like engineering, material science, and computer science. Her building-scale experiential sculptures, crafted from materials such as knotted fiber and atomized water, are designed to transform with the movement of wind and light, offering viewers an immersive environment to inhabit rather than just an object to observe. By blending traditional craft with modern computational software and performance elements like choreographed dancers, Echelman combines ancient craft with original computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents.

Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts in 2014, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.” Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, Harvard Loeb 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 more than two million views.

This event is presented by UMBC’s Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA).

Janet Echelman’s educational path has been nonlinear. After graduating from Harvard College, she lived in a Balinese village for five years, then completed separate graduate programs in painting and psychology. Tufts University recently awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts for her public artworks, noting that she never formally studied sculpture or engineering. It was an unexpected loss of her painting materials while on a Fulbright that began her journey from collaborating with fishermen on a beach in India to crafting her monumental fluidly-moving aerial sculptures today, in urban centers from London, Madrid, and Amsterdam, to Shanghai, Singapore, Santiago, and Sydney.

Echelman’s permanent commissions have transformed urban environments worldwide, and include Remembering the Future at the MIT Museum (2025), Butterfly Rest Stop in Frisco, TX (2024), Current in Columbus, OH (2023), Bending Arc at the St. Pete Pier in Florida (2020), Earthtime Korea in South Korea (2020), mist sculpture Pulse (2018) in front of Philadelphia City Hall, Dream Catcher (2017) on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, CA, Impatient Optimist (2015) at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Every Beating Second (2011) at San Francisco International Airport, Her Secret Is Patience (2009) in downtown Phoenix, and She Changes (2005) in Porto, Portugal.

In 2025, Chronicle Books published Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman, a 288-page visual compendium of Echelman’s oeuvre which accompanies a traveling mid-career museum retrospective.

Admission is free. The talk will be followed by a book signing and reception. (An r.s.v.p. form will be available soon.)

The Dance Cube, located on the third floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, is easy to visit, with plenty of free parking. Please visit here for additional information.

Image: Janet Echelman: Butterfly Rest Stop, Frisco, TX, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Echelman.)

This event is supported in part by the Arts+ initiative. This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University’s nondiscrimination policy.