Horizon Drift is a newly commissioned, textile-based public art installation by Tulsa artist Rachel Hayes. Designed specifically for the Plaza of the Americas and in response to Colorado’s colorscape, Horizon Drift will canopy the Plaza with a series of large, vibrant, and handmade textile panels that attach to and play off the space’s surrounding structures. Made from radially-oriented fabrics intentionally chosen by the artist for their durability and the ways in which their colors, opacities, and textures invoke and interact with the dynamic lighting and palette of Denver, these suspended panels will serve as windows to the city’s ever-ephemeral environmental conditions.

Hayes’ practice calls back to a rich lineage of artistic predecessors, from American quiltmakers, to Frank Stella’s abstract expressionist paintings, to Chihuly’s glass ceilings. Horizon Drift intertwines these references, adapting the traditionally feminine craft of Log Cabin quilting as the backbone for an architectural-scale, contemporary work that is as immense and compelling as it is functional. For viewers, Hayes envisions the installation as an uplifting offering that both augments and softens public space, yielding a place “where one can have a delightfully bold experience of the senses and also sit, chill out, and notice where we are in this exact moment.”

Horizon Drift is presented by the Biennial of the Americas with artistic direction by Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum.

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Made possible through generous support from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, the City of Denver’s Downtown Denver Activation Grant, Colorado Creative Industries, the David and Laura Merage Foundation, DaVita, Metropolitan District, and Riverfront Park Community Foundation.