The Great Blue Heron

Created in 2010, The Great Blue Heron connects the towering Renaissance condominium to London’s natural geography, where the artist Ted Goodden regularly encountered a blue heron while kayaking on the Thames River. As a nature enthusiast, Goodden originally conceived of the design for this artwork in 1975, whilst creating experimental wire sculptures inspired by his interest in waterfowl. This unique aesthetic sensibility was eventually distilled into an organic simplified form, and is further accentuated by its installation, high up on the side of a building.
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A circle of stained glass, designed by Goodden’s friend, Peter Andre, adorns one wing of the linear sculpture. This luminously patterns the sidewalk with coloured light, which slowly moves as the earth orbits the sun. To articulate this feature, Andre hired a stone mason to make a tile, which was installed at a precise place on the ground to line up exactly with the colored light beam during the summer and winter solstice. Such a feature gives this artwork an otherworldly cosmic sensibility which reminds us of the passage of time.