The 2025 coffee-table book Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman devotes 300 full-color pages to the works of the Tampa-born artist, whose elevated woven sculptural installations appear in 38 cities on four continents.
The book’s editors pay special attention to Bending Arc, which was created for the St. Pete Pier, and installed there in 2020. In photo after photo, the 424×280-foot net-like sculpture billows in the St. Petersburg breeze, 72 feet above the ground, its form ever-changing. The artwork’s strong PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) twine fibers, 180 miles of them (with 1,662,528 knots), are blue and white. At night, an LED lighting system changes the piece’s colors, mood and profile.
Bending Arc arrived with great fanfare and floated over a grassy field, near the Glazer Family Playground, for almost four years.
Yet the largest and most lauded public artwork in St. Petersburg’s history has been in a crate since Feb. 10, 2025. After significant hurricane damage, the 5,000-pound, complex system of twines and ropes was taken down and placed in storage, before Radical Softness had even gone to print.
No one, it appears, can agree on just what should be done with the $1.5 million “floating sculpture,” which was paid for entirely through private donations, from people who just wanted to see such a thing here. The City allocated an additional $1.3 million in tax increment financing to pay for the infrastructure and installation; another $250,000 came from the Public Arts Commission.
City records indicate serious differences in opinion between Echelman and Brejesh Prayman, Director of St. Petersburg Engineering and Capital Improvements, and City Development Administrator James Corbett, along with engineering and research firms and repair companies.
While the finger-pointing rages on, Bending Arc remains locked up tight.
A May 21, 2026 memorandum, written by Prayman and addressed to Corbett, outlined the situation, vis a vis the sculpture (the “Net”), the City’s conversations with Massachusetts-based Studio Echelman (JEI), and prospective study and repairs. The ultimate goal is re-installation.
“The City, both as an owner and a financer of the Net, has an interest in its reinstallation and conservation,” wrote Prayman, “provided that the sculptural net can be reattached (with proper materials and structural knots) to achieve its remaining 20-year service life and meet the code-required 155 mph wind loads.”
And, he told Corbett, there is a proposed plan:
“The City intends for this effort to be led by a qualified materials science and forensic engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE),” it read. “Key to making this determination is the testing of sections of the Net. WJE has advised that the only way in which this testing can be performed is if it receives samples from the Net; any such samples would have to be cut from the Net and be sent to WJE for testing. The City has requested the artist’s (“JEI”) permission to have samples cut from the Net for such testing; JEI has denied the requested permission.”
Echelman told Prayman last month that cutting samples “will degrade the structure and aesthetics of the artwork.”
In an August 2025 conversation with the Catalyst, Echelman was already questioning the additional cost and delay of the City’s continued desire for testing. A December 2024 inspection and report by the independent engineering consultant Stantec, she believed, had laid bare the primary cause of the failure.
“Stantec’s report concluded that the problem resulted from the connections between my net sculpture and the structural ropes,” she said, “which were lashings tied by the City’s insured contractor, who used substandard materials and methods.
“My studio’s role was to create the aesthetic design for the art, and the City’s engineer was responsible to specify materials and methods in stamped construction documents. Then my studio’s job was to accurately follow the engineer’s construction drawings, which were engineered to withstand Category 5 hurricanes.”
Prayman memo (May 2026): “In actuality, the Net had failed months earlier, in June 2024, and the City’s contractor, in subsequently attempting to repair the Net, utilized a more aggressive lashing technique, over and above what was originally contemplated in the construction documents. These repairs were ultimately unsuccessful, but the failure of the repairs cannot be solely attributed to the failure of the Net when the lashing technique set forth in the construction documents failed as well.”
The memo continued: “The City has continued to coordinate with JEI, at times facilitating weekly or biweekly calls, (including weekends); however, conversations have not yielded forward progress, as JEI has repeatedly provided guidance that it has later retracted or contradicted.”
Therefore, the stalemate continues.
“The cost and logistics for reattaching the sculptural net cannot be determined without the completion of a forensic analysis,” Prayman wrote.
“As we near the end of the summer, I am keenly aware of how important it is to restore this artwork to the St. Pete Pier for people to enjoy,” Echelman said in an email to the Catalyst today. “As an artist, I dedicated myself to creating this artwork for visitors to sit beneath and experience nature as the wind and light transform the sculpture. My highest goal is to return the sculpture as soon as possible, and I stand ready to support the city with our knowledge and expertise to restore the work to the people of St. Pete.”
Neither Prayman nor Corbett responded to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Mayor Ken Welch was asked about the issue at a July 21 event. “I’d like to be sure it’s going to be safe, and sustainable,” he said. “We don’t want that coming down on somebody, or have any other issues with it. And I think it’s worth waiting until we’re sure about that.”
Bending Arc: A timeline
January 2020. Bending Arc is installed by city workers at the under-construction St. Pete Pier. An “issue” with the structural ropes that connect the supporting pylons to the art is quickly discovered, requiring the sculpture to be taken down, assessed and re-hung. Echelman: “It’s not atypical to make adjustments once the work is viewed onsite.” Net House of Cocoa Beach removes, crates and ships it ($26,685) to Diamond Nets, in Washington State, for the needed adjustments. Echelman reimburses the City for the cost of removal, shipping and repair.
June 11, 2020. Bending Arc is re-attached, using a “temporary anchoring system.”
July 4, 2020. The 26-acre St. Pete Pier opens.
August 2020. The Pier closes for two mornings while workers attach Bending Arc to “permanent anchors.”
2021-2023: Annual inspections by Net House indicate no issues with the sculpture.
August, September and October 2024. Cumulative damage from Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton tear loose some of the connecting ropes, causing Bending Arc to noticeably sag. Although some detachment is visible post-Debby, Milton’s sustained winds, which reach a verified 180 miles per hour, do the most damage; sections of the sculpture touch the ground and become entangled with Adirondack chairs and other outdoor furniture.
December 23, 2024. Hired by the City, engineering consultant Stantec issues its report on the condition of the sculpture. Using a telescopic boom mobile crane, the company photographs the highest attached, and unattached, sections of the “Net.” Stantec also determines the cross-seizing connections (the “hanging twine”) had been incorrectly installed, in direct opposition to the original plans from Studio Echelman. Stantec concludes that a failure in the connections led to entire sections of the sculptural net becoming detached from its structural ropes.
“It can be concluded,” reads the report, “that the breakage of the cross seizing is the preeminent failure mode contributing to the sagging of the net sculpture. Field observation indicates that weather exposure and discrepancies between how the cross seizing was installed vs. how it was detailed in the plans likely contributed to its damage.”
Feb. 10, 2025. Net House takes Bending Arc down. “I think we should wait and see what the repair is going to be, and how long it’s going to take,” Echelman tells the Catalyst. “But I would like everybody to rest assured that we’re all working on it and we’re going to get them their artwork back as soon as possible.”
March 2026. “JEI (Echelman) agreed to work with the City, and agreed to pay for the repairs to the sculptural net, while the City covered the cost of shipping and reattaching the sculptural net. JEI later retracted this offer at the Recurring Coordination Meeting of May 1st, 2026.” (According to City memorandum of May 21).
“JEI suggested that the sculptural net be sent to the original fabricator (Diamond Nets) for repairs at the City’s expense. JEI further asserted that the only way to guarantee the structural integrity of the Net was to take down the structural rope (currently still in place) and have it reconnected to the sculptural net in the factory by Diamond Nets. This process would significantly disrupt Pier operations and would result in extremely high reinstallation costs.” (According to City memorandum of May 21).
April 30, 2026. “(Echelman) informed the City that JEI would not enter into an agreement to facilitate repairing the Net but would rather assist and advise.” (According to City memorandum of May 21).
May 21, 2026. “The City is concerned that without a proper forensic structural evaluation by an independent professional engineering firm … there can be no guarantee that the repaired sculptural net can be safely reattached to the structural net and provide the contractual remaining service life and survive both normal degradation of the material due to the elements as well as any future Hurricanes with wind gusts up to 155 mph.” (City memorandum).
July 2, 2026: Email from Prayman to Echelman reiterates that WJE, in order to conduct a “forensic analysis” of the net, will need to cut a 24”x24” square out of the sculpture in order to take samples. This email is followed up with a Zoom call.
July 16, 2026: Email from Echelman to Prayman: “I cannot support or give permission to cut my sculpture because our experience is that a plan like what you have proposed will degrade the structure and aesthetics of the artwork, which is owned by the City and funded by private donors.
She then recommends “two internationally recognized research institutions which are ready to properly provide the research needed at the same or lower cost than WJE’s proposal” and reiterates Stantec’s conclusion that “the cause of failure is not the net; it is the contractor’s use of substandard methods and materials … so it does not make sense to cut the net for testing when it will degrade the artwork.”
This content provided in partnership with StPeteCatalyst.com
