This sculpture was made for the community room of an innovative elderly housing project developed by the Cook Inlet Native Corporation in Anchorage, Alaska.  We chose colors that reminded us of the vibrant northern lights we used to watch in the Alaskan skies, and then designed transparent dancers from the various Alaskan Native tribes into the patterns.

One of the biggest problems we ran into in creating this piece was locating the Czech fire-polished and Austrian crystal beads in sufficient quanties.  Our suppliers were used to selling these imported beads by the 100's or 1000's, but we needed at least 10,000 of each color.  We ended up buying from a half-dozen different wholesalers... we'd buy out one wholesaler's stock of Aqua AB or Jonquil and then move on to the next.

The resulting aerial sculpture was quite thrilling when we finally got it installed.

From below, in the community room, the sculpture ripples across the ceiling like the northern lights.  The architects had thoughtfully installed high-intensity lights to highlight the refractive quality of the glass and crystal beads we used to create the sculpture.