Bird’s Eye View
-UPCOMING-
Bird’s Eye View brings a sense of motion and lightness to the elevated landscape of McLaren Park Glen Eagles Overlook. Composed of two soaring hawks with expansive wingspans, the installation captures a moment of suspended flight, hovering just above the ground while their intricate forms cast shifting shadows below.
Positioned on a visible hillside, the sculpture reads both from a distance and up close. From across the park and along the road, the hawks appear as silhouettes in motion, drawing the eye upward. As visitors approach, the experience becomes more intimate, with the laser-cut feathers projecting detailed patterns onto the ground that move and change with the light.
The work is activated by its environment. Sunlight, time of day, and the viewer’s position all shape the experience, making the shadows an essential extension of the sculpture itself. Subtle inscriptions within the wings, “BE YOU” and “FLY FREE,” emerge through both form and shadow, reinforcing the themes of freedom, individuality, and self-expression.
At Glen Eagles Overlook, Bird’s Eye View functions as both landmark and atmosphere, a dynamic presence that connects sky and ground while inviting visitors into a moment of reflection, movement, and possibility.
About the Artist
Nicki Adani (b. 1975, Munich, Germany) is a Bay Area–based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, painting, mixed media, and site-responsive public art. Originally trained in fashion design at ESMOD Munich, she worked internationally in Europe, New York, and California before establishing her art practice, bringing a distinctive understanding of form, structure, and movement to works ranging from intimate studio pieces to large-scale public installations. Inspired by expansive landscapes and birds of prey, Adani creates sculptural works that explore perspective, light, shadow, and spatial experience. Through dynamic forms that shift with changing viewpoints and natural conditions, her work expands perspective and inspires a vaster sense of possibility, inviting viewers to recognize the potential within themselves. Her public artworks include Bird’s Eye View, commissioned for BottleRock Napa, and Taking Flight, an Honoraria-funded installation for Burning Man.
Her work has been featured at Silicon Valley Sculpture, Petaluma Arts Center, and galleries throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and is held in private collections. She was selected for a Sonoma ReOpening Grant collaboration funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Committed to collaborative and community-centered projects, Adani has contributed to David Best Temple installations presented at the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery and the Oakland Museum of California. She frequently collaborates with engineers, fabricators, and project teams to realize ambitious site-responsive works from concept through installation.