Suspended aluminium mesh sculpture transforms park environment at nightfall

Seattle-based artist, Sophia Wheelwright has designed a cloud like aluminium mesh sculpture called Suspended Eddies that is beautifully installed among the trees in Seattle’s Occidental Square. This suspended sculpture, lit with innovative LED lighting transforms the park’s space with waves of reflecting colour as soon as night falls.

Commenting on her work, artist Wheelwright says, “I visited the site over a month, spending hours observing the park’s activity and imagining how a sculpture could inhabit the space. I want people to be curious, to sense its energy and pause in their normal routine to ask—what is this?”

In the daylight, Suspended Eddies looks like a camouflaged structure through which sunlight passes through beautifully and the curves similar to extended tree root or a human tissue or organ. As soon as the night falls, the installed LED lights transform the sculpture into a luminescent blue and green manifestation that contrasts with the green natural landscape around.



The artist is amused by the way people see shapes and objects in the colourful installation and how they have associated their imagination with what they see.

“With each project, I work with light, sound, movement, and sometimes other artists to discover how different approaches work with my materials in each setting. For this piece, I contracted lighting designer, David Verkade who helped both design and construct the grid to hang the sculpture without harming the trees. The piece has two distinct phases—daytime with natural light shifts and evening with a different palette of shifting light,” she added.

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The artist took 12 days to complete the structure. According to her, Suspended Eddies urges people to be aware of textures, patterns, sounds, and movements and how they change over the course of the day with change of light. “People spend increasing amounts of time looking at screens in one form or another. My work is about creating sculptures that are as enticing as those screens, but rather than focusing you down into a small window, they make you look up, broadening what you see, sense, and experience,” she reiterated.

Suspended Eddies will stay installed from August 4 to October 3, 2016 in Occidental Square, Seattle.