Janet Echelman is a world-renowned fiber artist known for large-scale aerial sculptures that blend art, architecture, and engineering. Installed in public spaces, her work uses lightweight materials like fiber, netting, and rope. She also created one of the first installations on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. Her latest book, “Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman,” showcases her work. Janet Echelman recently joined GBH’s Henry Santoro to discuss her book and artistry. The following interview has been slightly edited for clarity.
Henry Santoro: You call the Boston area home.
Janet Echelman: I moved to Boston at 17 from Tampa, Florida, where I still have a home. But Boston is where I raised my children and discovered art-making — it feels like my spiritual home.
Santoro: Most art we see is stationary — on walls or made of solid materials. Your work moves and lives outdoors. Did you find fiber, or did it find you?
Echelman: I grew up around it. My mother owned dress shops, and I spent time in the back rooms where tailors worked. I’d pick up fabric scraps. That early exposure stayed with me, though I never imagined working at the scale I do now.
Santoro: Your art is a whole lot about you?
Echelman: Well, you know it is. The shoemaker’s child makes shoes. The doctor’s child becomes a doctor. I suppose I got it.
Santoro: Your work challenges traditional ideas of art. How so?
Echelman: It challenges how we think about our built environment. Cities are full of rigid steel and glass. My work offers a contrast — it’s soft, flexible, and responsive. Instead of resisting nature, it adapts to it. That adaptability is its strength.
Santoro: That contrast reminds me of Fenway Park — surrounded by steel and glass, but inside it’s soft, green, and alive. And when you walk through those gates, you see this sea of green, this field of green that is soft and pliable. And there’s dirt that kicks up and there’s dust that kicks up and it really adds a tremendous element to being a ballpark within the city,
Echelman: That’s a beautiful comparison. It’s a uniquely Boston inspiration. Well, you don’t even know this, Henry, but I have made sketches of an artwork I have dreamed of doing in Fenway Park in the grass, drawings that I would mow into the grass because, of course, it’s an art form.
Santoro: Your installations complement their surroundings. Do you also create smaller-scale work?
Echelman: Yes. A current exhibition surveying four decades of my work includes pieces at every scale — from handheld studies to large installations. Some are prototypes, but they’re also complete works.
Santoro: Like architects, you start small before going big?
Echelman: Exactly. I prototype at multiple scales. Some of those pieces end up in museums or private collections. And actually in the book, “Radical Softness,” you get to go inside two private homes where I’ve created large permanent installations designed specifically for those families. I’ve also created permanent installations for homes, including one in California and another in Mumbai.
Santoro: How has public art evolved during your career?
Echelman: I was influenced by the controversy around Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc,” which many people felt was obstructive. My approach is the opposite—my work is open, transparent, and inviting. It creates space rather than blocking it.
Santoro: That’s evident in your Greenway installation.
Echelman: Yes. We essentially “laced” the city together above the Greenway. The piece stretched 600 feet and rose as high as the 23rd story of a nearby building. It floated above the space without obstructing it.
Janet Echelman, fiber artist
Santoro: You also incorporated Boston’s history. Everything that you incorporated into that one piece of art — a massive, majestic piece, I might add — you took into consideration the history
Echelman: The design referenced highway lines and colors from the old infrastructure, as well as the city’s long history of reshaping its landscape — from early landfills to the Big Dig.
Santoro: Projects at that scale require major collaboration. When you create a piece of that size — like you said, 600 feet of flowing art — you need help. You need to work with engineers, you need to work with architects, you need to work with city officials and planners. What went into it?
Echelman: It took a full year with engineers, city officials, and the Greenway Conservancy. Installation required shutting down part of I-90 at 3 a.m. and using multiple cranes to lift and unfurl the piece.
Santoro: Where is something like that made?
Echelman: In a facility near Seattle, in the Puget Sound region, with a long tradition of rope-making. We combine centuries-old craftsmanship with advanced materials — fibers stronger than steel — and cutting-edge computational design tools developed with MIT. I’ve been working there for 25 years, with the same families. It’s a real craft. It’s an industrial craft. The same braiders, the same twisters, the splicers. This is very old craftsmanship, a hundred years ago, two hundred, many hundreds of years ago. Wooden boats used all these same crafts. But we’re mixing it with the newest material science.
Santoro: There’s a connection to traditional fishing and net-making.
Echelman: Absolutely. It’s a humble, accessible craft, which I love — it invites people to connect with the work.
Santoro: Your TED Talk on rediscovering wonder has reached millions. What advice do you have for artists seeking that sense of discovery?
Echelman: Look back to your childhood. We’re all born with curiosity. Reconnecting with those early experiences can help rediscover that sense of wonder.
Santoro: Like a young Janet collecting fabric scraps, sitting in the back room of that dress shop.
Echelman: Exactly.
Santoro: Tell us about your book “Radical Softness.”
Echelman: I created the images, but the book features essays from 30 contributors around the world — artists, engineers, and scholars. I didn’t write it, but I did create all of the images for it, and I worked with a brilliant art historian, Gloria Sutton at Northeastern University, and she invited, together with our friends and colleagues around the world, 30 authors, have each written a short, short essay, no more than 500 words. It’s views from Helsinki, from Paris, from Jeddah, from Sydney, Australia. I mean, it’s all over the world, Amsterdam, London, Paris, you know. It’s a truly global perspective.
Santoro: Janet Echelman creates living, breathing sculptures that respond to nature. She’s a recipient of the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
