New outdoor glass sculpture in Cupertino comes from deserts around the world

In the olive grove adjacent to the Visitor’s Center at Apple Park in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, THE artist Katie Paterson and THE architectural studio Zeller & Moye created Mirage, an artwork composed of over four hundred glass columns, each two meters high.

To create these thin cylinders, the team collected sand from deserts across the Earth in collaboration with UNESCO, expert glass makers, geologists, and material scientists. For each desert, in fact, it was necessary to develop innovative methods of glass processing and formulate unique recipes, which have resulted in micro-variations of colors and textures of pillars. Thanks also to this effect, observing the light falling between the pillars, illuminating them in many different ways, becomes a kind of meditation, shifting the observers’ attention from a linear temporal perspective to the here and now, giving them a deep sense of total presence in the moment.

“Sand, so ubiquitous across Earth, is a marker of time. […] Our hope is that Mirage creates a sensory experience that will ignite the imagination, connect visitors to the vastness of the Earth and its precious wilderness,” said Katie Paterson. Mirage, in fact, aims to celebrate the lands from which it took shape and the people who live there, protecting them and taking care of them.