Amanda McCavour, Floral Canopy, 2023, powder-coated steel wire, Albee Square Campus, Brooklyn​

Floral Canopy is a site-specific artwork by Amanda McCavour for the lobby ceiling of the new Albee Square Campus, Brooklyn. The hanging sculpture is composed of hundreds of vibrant green, yellow, and orange wires that the artist hand-shaped into the forms of native plants. To create the artwork, McCavour examined plant specimens from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Native Flora Garden and the New York Botanical Garden’s Steete Herbarium. She made dozens of drawing studies of species that find their home locally, such as May Apple, Button Bush, Milkweed, and many others. Like three-dimensional drawings, the intricately crafted and gestural wire forms accumulate into a floating field with wildflowers above the viewers’ heads. Floral Canopy shifts our perspective and demonstrates how scientific practices of observation and documentation can fuel artistic practices of creativity and imagination.