By Melissa Henry, Studio Echelman

Janet Echelman, the internationally-renowned artist who has been commissioned to create an original artwork for Dilworth Plaza, has been selected for a major commission in Boston.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy selected Echelman from a field of nearly 100 artists to create a monumental aerial sculpture to suspend over the Boston Greenway as the signature contemporary art installation in the Conservancy’s Public Art Program.

Echelman is known for her soft, billowing sculpture the scale of buildings that responds to the forces of nature — wind, water, and light. Her creation for Boston will be a knotted-fiber sculpture suspended hundreds of feet over the central section of the Greenway. Her ultra-lightweight art moves gently with the wind in ever-changing patterns. In daylight it casts shadow-drawings on the ground, and at night it becomes a beacon with dynamic colored light. The sculpture will be installed from Spring 2015 to Fall 2015.

Echelman continues to work on her designs for ‘Pulse’ – the site-specific artwork for Dilworth Plaza, commissioned by the Center City District. Pulse will use five-foot-tall, moving columns of atomized water to reflect in real time the movements of the transportation systems below, featuring the colors of SEPTA’s transit lines that converge beneath City Hall. It marks a new dimension for Echelman and her studio for its use of atomized water rather than fabric as the medium. Echelman’s sculpture is expected to premiere in 2015.

Click here to read the Boston Globe article about Echelman’s Boston commission.

The nonprofit funder ArtPlace will announce a $250,000 public art grant to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which runs the 15-acre network of parks in downtown Boston. Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe