St. Petersburg’s 26-acre waterfront pier is dominated by a billowing 72-foot-tall aerial sculpture that’s composed of more than 1.6 million knots and 180 miles of twine. Measuring 424 feet long by 240 feet wide, “Bending Arc” is just one of Janet Echelman’s building-sized, block-long public artworks.
“Janet Echelman was raised in the Tampa area,” noted Virginia Shearer, the executive director of the Sarasota Art Museum. “She is known for working with engineers, architects, designers, and making large-scale netted sculptural works, soft sculptures that are suspended from buildings across football fields, raining down from ceilings.”
Shearer couldn’t be more excited for patrons to see Echelman’s first-ever museum exhibition, “Radical Softness.”
“’Radical Softness plays with how colorful and light-filled and kind of magical and effervescent her works look, but we're also going to tell the story of how technically grounded [she is] in the latest and greatest in technology, science, and engineering,” Shearer added.
At its core, the exhibition highlights Echelman’s use of softness as a powerful tool—not only in material but as a philosophy. Showcasing a selection of works from all four decades of the artist’s path-breaking career, the show underscores how an artist’s work can bring people together and carve out space for reflection in an ever-changing world.
“Radical Softness” opens Nov. 16 and runs through April 26, 2026.
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Award-winning and internationally recognized artist Janet Echelman is renowned for her soaring installations that merge ancient craft with cutting-edge technology. Using centuries-old fishing net knotting techniques, Echelman transforms humble materials into ethereal sculptures that recall natural phenomena and the interconnectedness of humanity and the environment.
Her use of netting resulted from happenstance. After receiving a Fullbright Lectureship, she traveled to India to teach painting and exhibit her work, but her painting supplies never arrived. So she began sculpting using indigenous fishing nets.
Using unlikely materials from atomized water particles to engineered fiber 15 times stronger than steel, Echelman combines ancient craft with computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents, from Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, and Santiago, to Beijing, Boston, New York and London. Permanent works in Porto (Portugal), Gwanggyo (South Korea), Vancouver, San Francisco, West Hollywood, Phoenix, Eugene, Greensboro, Philadelphia, Seattle, Columbus (Ohio) and St. Petersburg (Florida) transform daily with colored light. Her art changes with wind and light, and shifts from being “an object you look at, into an experience you can get lost in.”
“Radical Softness” offers a rare, intimate look at Echelman’s artistic evolution, tracing her journey from early explorations in drawing, painting, and textiles to the monumental netted sculptures that have redefined public spaces around the world. This exhibition contextualizes the artist’s practice, revealing the narratives, influences, and processes that drive her work.
The artist now works under the auspices of her Boston-based atelier, Studio Echelman.
Echelman is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, and Fulbright Senior Lectureship. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work No. 1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and 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 2 million views.
Her monumental sculptures span five continents. Recent commissions 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” (2020), “Impatient Optimist” at The Gates Foundation in Seattle (2015) and “1.8 Renwick” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2015), among others.
Echelman has a Robert Rauschenberg connection. Rauschenberg discovered Echelman’s art while in Asia in 1989 as part of his ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange) world tour and curated a solo exhibition of her work in the United States. He also purchased three of her canvases for his personal collection.
For more, visit https://www.echelman.com.
"Janet Echelman: Radical Softness" is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Lacie Barbour, associate curator of exhibitions at Sarasota Art Museum.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
