Rain Veil, Seoul, Korea, Completed 2024

The artwork envelopes a huge, existing water tower with a wind-animated veil that ripples and glimmers like water. The installation functions as an appreciation for water, the miraculous substance that sustains all life on this planet. The artwork drapes over the existing tower like a cape, a cloak, a veil, transforming the concrete structure into a piece of fluid architecture, a liquid/gaseous skyscraper. The Rain Veil consists of a series of spiral stainless steel cables, anchored to a circular concrete footing around the base and held to the top of the tower. The twisting angle of the support cables naturally form an hourglass-shaped skin called a hyperbolic parabola. This organic shape is evocative of a huge tree, widening at the base for stability and spreading out at the top to catch the light and wind as trees have evolved to do. Cables running in opposite directions divide the hyperbolic surface into a matrix of diamond-shaped voids, like the facets of a huge crystal. Each of these facets holds a matrix of small kinetic elements attached to a welded stainless steel wire mesh. Each horizontal rung of the mesh has a hinged plastic leaf that sways in the wind. The leaves are fabricated from a bio-plastic material called Durabio. Durabio is an extremely durable, UV-protected material that is created from plants. Unlike other plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, all the carbon in Durabio is derived from living plants which draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Thus, the artwork functions to extract carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in something beautiful which will keep this carbon out of the atmosphere for many decades. The leaves are colored a deep cobalt blue to suggest water. As the leaves sway in the wind, they catch color from the sky and glints of sunlight and sparkle like the surface of water.