These materials make up Off the Beaten Path, a vibrant, viral art installation that went up this summer above Gazebo Lake in Green Mountain Falls, near Colorado Springs.
The installation was commissioned by local arts organization Green Box, which hosts visual and performing arts experiences throughout the year, including at the annual Green Box Arts Festival.
Off the Beaten Path is composed of 35,700 pieces of kite fabric and 6,276 linear feet of rope to create a stunning display that moves naturally with its surroundings. Patrick Shearn is the artist behind the work.
Shearn is the creative director of Poetic Kinetics, a studio based in Black Forest that creates large-scale public works designed to engage their audiences. His work has been showcased at huge outdoor festivals, including Coachella and Burning Man.
Shearn got his start as an artist in the film industry and worked on films like Jurassic Park. “ I built the man in suit raptors. There was a whole raptor team, but I did all the mechanics for that series and then a bunch of props,” he says.
Off the Beaten Path is part of a body of works called the Skynet Series. Each work is site-specific, like Firebird Descent, which hovered over New Holland Island in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2017 and was so large it was visible from space.
“ I started playing around with materiality, hanging streamers on net to try to create that sense of connected motion across a large body, like a large school of fish."
Jeff Kearney/TDC Photography
“ I understood fishing net. I'm oftentimes inspired by materiality,” he says. “I was also a wilderness guide in Baja and the Grand Canyon, so I'm very interested in nature and naturalistic principles.”
In terms of movement, he was inspired by flocks of birds and the patterns of wind traversing through a wheat field.
“ I started playing around with materiality, hanging streamers on net to try to create that sense of connected motion across a large body, like a large school of fish,” Shearn says.
As for color, Shearn has created works in the series for botanical gardens and loved how vibrant colors contrasted with the greenery. Off the Beaten Path pops against the natural setting of Green Mountain Falls.
Many visitors discovered “Off the Beaten Path” through TikTok and other social media platforms. “This work has surpassed all of Green Box’s permanent or temporary installations as the most viral,” says Scott Levy, executive director of Green Box.
Levy says he began discussing plans for Off the Beaten Path with Shearn about two years ago. This year’s Green Box Arts Festival took place in early July and featured works by Colorado artists. Shearn’s piece welcomed visitors to the event, and it will be on display through October 19.
“I just really want to light people up," Shearn says. " I want to make people happy. I want to surprise and transform a space so that when you're [having a] humdrum day, you're walking down the street, you turn the corner, and there's something new and unexpected and unexplainable there in public.”
Levy says Off the Beaten Path has already brought in hundreds, if not thousands, of first-time visitors. He explains that the work feels like “pure joy” and looks like “a three-dimensional live firework.”
“ It's off the beaten path, right? It's not your average arts festival,” Shearn says. “We've done a lot of work with Coachella and other music festivals, and this is just a whole different animal and very impressive.”
Off the Beaten Path is on display above Gazebo Lake in Green Mountain Falls through October 19.
