American artist Janet Echelman builds living, breathing sculpture environments that respond to the forces of nature - wind, water and light - and become inviting focal points for civic life. Experiential in nature, the result is sculpture that shifts from being an object you look at, to something you can get lost in. Exploring the potential of unlikely materials from fishing net to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with cutting-edge technology to create her permanent sculpture at the scale of buildings. Oprah Magazine's "List of 50 Things that Make You Say Wow!" ranked Echelman's work #1. Architectural Digest named her an AD Innovator for "changing the very essence of urban spaces." Her TED talk "Taking Imagination Seriously" has been translated into 34 languages and viewed by more than a million people worldwide.Her sculptures are credited with transforming cities around the world. The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence medal cites “Janet Echelman’s luminescent sculpture establishes a distinct civic identity” for Phoenix, Arizona. In Porto, Portugal, Echelman's 160-foot-tall waterfront sculpture was called “one of the truly significant public artworks in recent years” by Sculpture Magazine. Her "Water Sky Garden" which premiered with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games has become a regional destination at the Richmond Olympic Oval in Canada. She graduated from Harvard College and completed graduate degrees in psychology and painting, but never formally studied sculpture.A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts, 
Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Japan Foundation, Harvard Graduate School of Design Loeb Fellowship, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Lectureship, and the Guggenheim Fellowship, Echelman recently served as the Resident in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome.Specialties: Art, sculpture, public art, urban development, painting.