Beside the scale house at Bow Lake Transfer Station, a large cloud-like form hovers and twinkles above the landscape, framing gorgeous views of the Green River Valley and the Cascade Mountains. Created by Andy Cao with Xavier Perrot, Confetti Cloud is visible to residential customers and commercial haulers coming and going from the facility, as well as to passing cars on I-5 South.

Inspired by the way the imagination reveals forms in clouds, the sculpture changes dramatically with the light, weather conditions, and seasons, inviting the viewer to see limitless possibilities in its humble materials. Steel mesh suspends tiny fragments of re-purposed colored glass like confetti blowing in the breeze—and the glass itself has a meaningful provenance in Northwest art history. During a residency at the Pilchuck Glass School, the international center for contemporary art glass in Stanwood, WA, Cao discovered a private “landfill” where thousands of tons of glass fragments were deposited over 40 years. The artists harvested glass for Confetti Cloud from this unique resource, emphasizing the importance of reuse at the waste management site.

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Landscape artist Andy Cao was born in Vietnam and currently resides in Los Angeles. He and French artist Xavier Perrot are the founding partners of Cao | Perrot Studio, which creates intimate gardens for private and corporate clients, permanent public art, and large-scale landscape and planning visions, including the winning design for 600-acre Guangming Central Park in Shenzhen, China, and the 4Culture commission Pillow Field in White Center, WA. The studio’s work has been described as “incidental placemaking,” blurring the line between landscape and art.