Client: Denver Public Art

Overview

Woven Light is a shady refuge from the intensity of the prairie light in Northfield’s Uplands Park in Denver, CO. This work of public art designed as a gathering space is an outdoor room; you are inside and outside at the same time and the shadows, light and projected color make you more conscious of the sun and the breeze than if you were standing in the open. When seen from the outside, the dichroic glass between the wood slats reflects the sky and surrounding trees. Inside is like being in a kaleidoscope of moving colored lights on the darkened interior as the sun shifts angle. We can look through the openings or through the glass that changes the color of the landscape like a lens. Endlessly changing patterns of crisscrossing shadows and reflected light within and on the ground dematerialize the structure and make a rich shadow on the surrounding surfaces extending the impact of the art beyond its physical boundaries.

Goals

The angle of the wood slats will always cast shadow somewhere in the structure no matter where the sun sits. Seating along the curved walls inside encourages people to stay and ponder the light and space. Woven Light is a structure through which we discover the beauty that surrounds us: the sky, the mountains in the distance, sunlight and leaves on the nearby trees moving in the wind. Catherine Widgery's Woven Light was welcomed into the Denver Public Art Collection in 2018.