Mo Kelman’s sculptural artworks are driven by contrasts and interactions between the built environment and the natural world, merging abstracted images of water in its various forms – rivers, lakes, clouds and ice – with industrial and architectural structures.

Kelman favors simple, malleable materials – like wood, wire and bamboo – and uses geometric logic to invent efficient construction methods. Onto these structures she integrate “skins” by crafting nets or by resist-dyeing white silk organza into elastic, translucent, woodgrain-patterned membranes. Many of the sculptures are tensile structures where the pliable membranes are tethered, stretched, and shaped through tension.