What) Her Secret Is Patience is a public art sculpture commission designed by artist Janet Echelman. Its creation was the result of a collaboration between the artist and a team of award-winning engineers, architects, planners and fabricators. It is located downtown in the Civic Space Park. The sculpture consists of painted, galvanized steel; polyester twine netting (38 feet off the ground and 100 feet tall) and colored lights. The title of the piece is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”) and during construction it was unofficially titled Sky Bloom.

    The netting is designed to show the movements of the wind. Its shape reflects Arizona's enormous cumulus clouds, and the colors were inspired by the blossoms of the cereus cactus which are found in the region. (1)

    Where) 424 North Central Avenue

    Why) I did not look at any pictures of this sculpture before we visited it but the description was nice and it gave us a good excuse to drive around downtown Phoenix.

Before we get to the sculpture itself I thought I would share a couple nice images that could have inspired Janet Echelman. (2)

Those were Arizona cumulus clouds on March 19, 2012 and this cereus cactus was blooming in a garden in nearby Wickenburg. (3)

I can't say that this image of Patience reminds me of either of those things but ...

... there was something appealing about the ring part of the sculpture that I wasn't able to capture even though ... 

... I took pictures of it from 7 different angles. I was also interested in ...

... the structure holding the ring up but those 5 pictures turned out even less appealing so I have limited your exposure to just one x 2.

Of course the best views occurred at night but I wasn't there to take this one. (4)

I also enjoyed looking at some of Janet Echelman's other work like this sculpture that was in Denver in 2010. (5)