Baird Center, Wisconsin Convention Center, Milwaukee, WI, USA, 2024

Floe is a suspended sculpture inspired by the spectacular ice forms of Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers and the movement of wildlife across and through these waterways.

A 70’-long frame of stainless steel pipe, evoking fanning tributaries of the Milwaukee River Watershed, hangs from the ceiling of the Baird Center. The frame supports cables that terminate in blue discs and clear shards. At one end of the installation, elliptical discs are dispersed and perfectly level, resembling broken sheets of ice floating across a lake. In the center, over an escalator, the ellipses transition into circles stacked with rings, spaced closer together to resemble a floe of "pancake ice." At the top of the escalator, the discs transitions to sharp, irregular shapes with prismatic edges that refract sunlight and cast colored spectrums. These tilt up diagonally and vertically, like ice shards formed when waves stack broken sheets of ice together at the shoreline.

Small, stainless steel and dichroic glass triangles attached to the cables both above and below the acrylic “ice” evoke birds and fish and catch sunlight and air currents in this ever-changing environment.

Floe was commissioned by Wisconsin Center District through a process managed by Public Art Services. The sculpture was fabricated and installed by Merge Studios and engineered by Yetiweurks.