Of all the outdoor works in Girl Group, Midnight has the largest footprint: more than twenty-five feet of constructed aluminum painted in warm sunset tones. Nestled in the tall grasses of the farm fields, Midnight’s intersecting planes are punctuated with openings—apertures through which the landscape is incorporated into, and becomes part of, the work itself. Shechet says, “I was thinking about the idea of supports, and I was thinking about how the sculptures are supported by the landscape and vice versa. That is a very special relationship that only sculpture can embrace.” 

Midnight grew from an earlier ceramic sculpture—Together: Midnight—which is on view inside the Museum Building. The red-glazed surface of the ceramic opens to reveal pockets of deep blue, and in its form one can gain insight into the way in which Shechet translated her ceramics into the towering metal works on display outdoors.