Water Forest is artist Howard Ben Tré’s public sculpture commissioned by the City of Tacoma for the Museum of Glass Main Plaza. It comprises a forest of vertical elements with clear acrylic and bronze tubing through which water rises and falls. It is designed so that people can walk through and amongst these elements.
Ben Tré says the vertical forms allude to the Museum’s dominant architectural feature—the giant cone—but don’t compete with it. The cycles of water in the tubing are meant to evoke the tidal cycle of the nearby Thea Foss Waterway.
I feel that when people come to a sculpture, there may
be many people in the room, but they’re experiencing
the sculpture in a kind of individual way. And yet when
they come to a communal space that I’ve created,
they are sharing that experience in a collective way.
—Howard Ben Tré