Project Management: Ashley Hetrick, Michelle Boyton, Chloe Grey,
Joanna James, Jenny Jenkins
Creative Direction: Sean Madden and Louise Mackie
Design Direction: Jean Colangelo
Curation and Art Direction: Stacie Cassutt and Lindsey Shive
Production Support: Zach Schmidt, Phoebe Han, Lydia Montgomery
Design Engineering: Carl Burdick, Kelly Numamoto, Matthew Avery
Mural Operations: Michael Pacarar, Michael De La Riva
Joanna James, Jenny Jenkins
Creative Direction: Sean Madden and Louise Mackie
Design Direction: Jean Colangelo
Curation and Art Direction: Stacie Cassutt and Lindsey Shive
Production Support: Zach Schmidt, Phoebe Han, Lydia Montgomery
Design Engineering: Carl Burdick, Kelly Numamoto, Matthew Avery
Mural Operations: Michael Pacarar, Michael De La Riva
Gradient Canopy is one of the first times Google led the concept and construction of its own campus. Our team curated and supported the making of a collection of artwork made by 30+ Bay Area artists. The collection embodies the project’s priority for sustainability and biodiversity, featuring artists and activists who integrate nature into their process, motifs, and themes.
NDA restrictions restrict the images I can share; however, throughout the process of creating the collection, I had the privilege of joining artists in their studios to capture their process and intention for the work. Below are some behind-the-scenes of the collection.
Born in China and relocating to the United States at seventeen, Haoyun Erin Zhao established her multidisciplinary practice San Francisco, primarily working in painting, printmaking, and installation. For Gradient Canopy, Erin painted two large-format dyptychs titled Melodic Bay and Oceanic Caligraphy to be positioned at opposite ends of the building–drawing visitors through work inspired by different Bay Area biomes.
Zhao’s practice exists at the intersection of Eastern and Western philosophies, exploring how color, form, and symbol accrue layered meanings through cultural context and personal experience. Informed by early training in calligraphy and ink painting and later engagement with Western art and philosophy, her work reflects a sustained inquiry into the essence of things, the fluidity of meaning, and the challenge of rendering the intangible perceptible.
From this foundation, she draws recurring motifs from nature, including birds, wings, and plants, as well as elemental and intangible forces such as water, fire, wind, and Qi (energy). Through translucency, gradients, and calligraphic gestures, forms overlap, dissolve, and re-emerge, embodying interconnectedness and continual transformation.
Classically trained in drawing and painting, Haydu ultimately fell in love with the paper substrate on which she was mark-making.
Haydu’s unique works reflect the ecstatic energies she experiences in the open spaces of her California home, as well as the repeating patterns that occur naturally in everything from waves to rock formations. Her finished works evoke the energetic topographies of the outdoor spaces she holds dear.
For Gradient Canopy, Carolynn worked with the SPMD team to fabricate her layers in CNC-cut wooden canvases for her to apply her techniques.
Dana Hemenway is an artist based in San Francisco. Her work is rooted in the excavation and elevation of utilitarian objects to make visible what has become habituated in our built environments. Hemenway uses these functional items as materials to form traditionally fiber-based crafts–– lights and cords are woven through ceramics or the gallery wall, extension cords are transformed into macramé chains. Her light installation follows the estuary environments near the Gradient Canopy project site.
Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and entrepreneur based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual freedom. Her work centers joy and healing, while challenging entrenched myths and dominant cultural practices. Favianna's creative practice serves as a record of her human experiences as a woman of color embracing pleasure and womb healing through creative expression and personal transformation. Her signature mark-making embodies the perspective of a first-generation American Latinx artist with Afro-Latinx roots who grew up in Oakland, California during the era of the war on drugs and the birth of Hip Hop.
For the project, Favianna and the SPMD team translated her paper collage techniques into a large-scale wheatpaste application celebrating the Bay Biome.
Nicole Mueller is a visual artist and painter based in San Francisco, CA. Her paintings are vibrant and lyrical, both process-driven and organic explorations of self and sentience. Built from an abstract visual language, they become profound explorations into personal psychology, driven by impulse, intuition, and feeling. Mueller combines influences from memories of things like animated films from her childhood and a heightened awareness of her body in the present moment, manifested through intuitive gestures that reveal a complex and dramatic interiority.
For the project, Nicole painted two large-scale canvases inspired by the California redwoods and foothills, to be positioned at opposite ends of the building, encouraging visitors to traverse the series.
