Client: Haddad | Drugan

Overview

Iridescent Cloud consists of over seven hundred acrylic prisms individually affixed to stainless steel rods clustered together and suspended by a high-tensile cable net strung between three massive hexagonal columns. The prisms shift and shimmer with changing environmental conditions, providing a dynamic visual experience for viewers on the southern plaza and adjoining open park space.

Goals

Demiurge created a specialized fabrication plan for this piece, drawing on our experience, metal fabrication best practices, and the unique needs of a ten-thousand pound piece of fine art sculpture. Fabrication of the piece occurred over the course of several months, with Demiurge first completing and installing the three massive columns, then following weeks later with the lighter, but no less difficult “cloud” of stainless rod and acrylic prisms.

Process

Demiurge worked with artist team Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan to fabricate and install Iridescent Cloud. Commissioned and owned by the City and County of Denver, Iridescent Cloud is the public art component of the recent addition to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. In conceptualizing the piece, Haddad|Druagn drew inspiration from the “museum’s mineral collection, exhibits about the optical properties of light, and Colorado’s dynamic sun and sky, and iridescent clouds”.