Kinetic Energy

IF HUMANS NOW fully design their environments, shouldn’t they make them thrilling? This is a question no one ruminates on more than Patrick Shearn, who, through his art studio known as Poetic Kinetics, designs, fabricates, and installs mind-bending public artworks that transform how audiences engage with their surroundings.

Shearn first honed his skills in the film industry, creating visual effects for such Tinseltown classics as Jurassic Park, Fight Club, and Interview with a Vampire, before venturing into public art in 2005. However, it was his marionette show at the 2008 Beijing Olympics that truly kicked off Poetic Kinetics. Ever since, his lauded art installations, which incorporate cutting-edge technology and scientific principles to mimic organic movement, have been placed across the globe, including at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Electric Daisy Carnival, and even Burning Man.

Now, in a classic twist seemingly drawn from his old Hollywood stomping grounds, Shearn returns to his hometown of Colorado Springs and then ten miles west to Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, to present a new version of his most beloved artwork at the Green Box Festival, on view from June 27 to July 12, 2025.

“There is certainly something satisfying about coming home and creating something dramatic,” Shearn says wryly. The artist’s new piece will be the latest incarnation of his well-known and much-loved Skynet Art Series, but he was careful not to give away too many details. “I am inspired to complement, rather than compete with, the site,” he says, “and I have designed a playful, ranging shape that is intimate at times and exceedingly kinetic at others.”

The artwork will be approximately 6,000 square feet and, during the festival, can be found smack dab in the center of town, even spanning part of Gazebo Lake. “Green Box has a history of art installations and pieces that deal with light or the natural world,” says Julie Maguire, an adviser at Green Box, the Colorado-based nonprofit arts organization in charge of the festival. “The Skynet series is … a reaction to the location, so Green Mountain Falls feels like the perfect place to inspire a truly unique Skynet.” The official unveiling of his installation will be on June 27, 2025, the opening day of the Green Box Arts Festival.

Shearn’s installation will be the culmination of a loving return to where he was born and raised, preceded by his first-ever gallery exhibition, which opened this past November at the Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. The exhibition runs through March 15, 2025.

“With Patrick … we had to reconsider notions of scale,” says Joy Armstrong, the director and curator at GOCA, about re-creating Shearn’s nature-oriented work inside a white-walled gallery. “[Shearn’s indoor sculptures] are diminutive in comparison to his massive outdoor works, and we also lack the dynamism of nature in our static gallery, making it necessary to think about creating a similar sense of movement and activation without the benefit of wind, natural light, or animal presence … but it was fun to develop a quintessential Poetic Kinetics experience using a modified vocabulary.”

Wherever his work appears, one thing is clear: Green Mountain Falls’ awe-inspiring environment has been a massive influence on Shearn’s work over the years. “Patrick’s work embodies the sense of limitlessness evoked by our [town’s] unbroken blue skies, dramatic mountain ranges, powerful summer storms, never-ending prairies, and drifting snow,” Armstrong says. “His imagination was cultivated here and continues to be nurtured in connection to community, nature, and possibility.”

And even though he’ll surely face new challenges with this monumental artwork, it helps that Shearn is so familiar with the locale. “The valley surrounding the lake channels the wind pretty consistently, so I am designing the installation to take advantage of the wind to create as much dynamic choreography in the artwork as possible,” Shearn says. “I also couldn’t resist engaging the lake as a mirror [to] play with reflections over the water.”