This is a brief encounter with a unique expression of art. Through fish nets and a well-versed view of the world.

Janet Echelman is American by passport only. University took her to Hong Kong, where she studied Chinese Calligraphy and Visual Art – but more importantly where she learned the importance of honing a traditional skill to create a work of art.

After the cosmopolitan Hong Kong came the down-to-earth Island of Bali, Indonesia, a region that taught her the craft of the traditional batik cloths, of the manual dying techniques.

These years happened within an idyllic setting of a grass-roofed studio on the rice fields and a view of the volcanoes. After 10 years, India was the next destination and sculpting was the art to discover.

Teaching painting never happened because the paints never arrived. A general sigh of relief is heard – for what did happen was something never seen before. She had to resort to what she had access to, to what she saw every evening after work when she went for a walk on the beach and a swim.

As the fishermen brought the nets, it occurred to her that in these series of intertwined strings lied a potential for mass or shapes with the ebbs and flows of the wind – “they billowed softly and made the unseen dance of wind visible”.

She allows the strings to be choreographed by nature – changing and renewing itself every moment.