Last week, Janet Echelman assembled an amazing, vast, and temporary sculpture in Santa Monica.  I was lucky enough to be there the night before it premiered (AND concluded), and got some great photos of it before its debut (AND finale).  For instance:

Janet works with nets and light.  I’m not sure if this is quite how she’d put it, but as an outside observer, I see these as being her media (along with wind & sound, in some cases).  Back in 2011 she gave this talk at TED, in which she revealed how this all started.  Long story short, she was in India on a Fulbright grant, intending to make art … and when her paints didn’t arrive in time for a key show, she was forced to improvise.  Wandering along a beach and wondering what to do, she saw some fishermen tangling with these vast, billowing nets – and inspired by this, she made her first net sculpture.

Sometime thereafter she married an old friend of my from business school, which is how we met.  And then over time, her unique, airy forms developed an international following.  A couple years back, the San Francisco International Airport invited her to shape the space & volume of its (now) gorgeous Terminal 2 with this sculpture.  Illuminating it properly required some gaping skylights, which the Airport Authority approved.  Now, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who’s allowed to bash holes into airport ceilings in the post 9/11 world is pretty much a bigwig – so at that point, I knew she had arrived.

I’m sure her SFO piece will be there for decades, but this piece in Santa Monica was completely ephemeral

In creating it, she was as much a director – or a producer – as an artist.  Cranes arrived.  Bulldozers too.  Over a few days they moved towering volumes of sand, and hauled in something like 70,000 pounds of cement.  Then the lighting ninja’s showed up.

By wonderful coincidence, the lighting company that Janet ended up working with happens to be co-owned by the husband of one of my wife’s best friends (yeah I know that’s a mouthful … but for all intents & purposes, the guy is basically my brother-in-law).  Janet and the lighting team logged God knows how many hours, and the results were sublime.

The nets billowed overhead, in dimensions of a circus tent.  The lights shifted in a leisurely march, casting a series of brooding colors on them.  A eerie, murmuring soundtrack underpinned it all.  I hung out there with Janet, her crew, and her husband (both of us doing our best to stay the hell out of the way) the night before the crowds showed up.  And crowds there were – over 100,000 people came by the following evening for Glow Santa Monica – an annual art extravaganza.  There were about a dozen other pieces on exhibit – all by LA artists, with Janet being the only non-local invited to participate (she’s Boston-based).  And the press showed up in force too – this piece in the New York Times tells the story pretty well.

All of this has gotten me thinking of the ephemeral nature of art.  This was a massive effort – but like a cicada, it existed only briefly after a long gestation.  This is an extreme case – but almost all art is like this on some level.  Van Gogh’s colors have faded in ways that in some cases mask his original intent. The most obsessive Broadway revival can’t precisely replicate vanished sets, performances, or actors.  And even things that are flawlessly transmitted to our day – written works, say – morph tremendously with the passage of time.  There’s just no way we can consume a Jane Austen novel like a true native of her time and place. Sure, we can follow the storyline – but the language & values are antique to us.  This intercedes with its impact, and it just won’t have the gut immediacy of something that’s native to our time (Breaking Bad, say).

Here’s a funny example – I loved Janet’s piece in part because it reminded me of my favorite video game from childhood, Tempest.

But try explaining Tempest’s impact, importance & beauty – all of which were immense – to anyone who grew up on Halo.  They’ll be able to grasp it cognitively if they’re really patient & effortful about it.  But it will be a neck-up thing.  You just can’t pluck a piece of art out of its time without transmuting its impact.

Anyway – Janet’s piece was awesome, and I’m really happy that I got to see it during its brief stint in the here & now.  I have a bigger gallery of pictures of it here if you’re interested.