Follow the pedestrian path along SW 98th Street from White Center’s business district toward the Greenbridge housing development and you’ll encounter Pillow Field, Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot’s permanent earthwork.

Sited on 16,000 square feet of steep slope, the artwork is comprised of 227 “pillows” of mounded earth, which are tucked into four quadrants defined by a central staircase and an ADA-accessible ramp. The pillows vary in size and shape—to represent the diversity of cultures in White Center—but they’re all covered in the same soft carpet of creeping thyme, a perennial evergreen. The plants maintain the shapes of the mounds and provide a shock of pink when they bloom in late spring and summer. Pillow Field is the first permanent public artwork by Cao and Perrot in the United States.

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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 Confetti Cloud. The studio’s work has been described as “incidental placemaking,” blurring the line between landscape and art.