Hive Mind

Hive Mind, 2025, 108” x 96” x 66”, bronze, stainless steel, glass, permanent collection of Iowa State University, photo credit: Chris Gannon

Hive Mind, a large-scale outdoor sculpture fabricated in bronze and glass for Iowa State University’s campus, captures the dynamics of a highly organized social system, its circular form and rhythm evoking the perpetual cycles of production. The sculpture embodies the process of gathering, binding and conserving knowledge.

Hive Mind hints at what is known and what is yet to be discovered, challenging the notion of linear progress. It invites reflection on the stories that shape knowledge and the collaborative processes that define collective growth.

photo credit: Chris Gannon

Positioned at the heart of campus, where all pathways converge, Hive Mind contains embedded clear glass objects that represent the university’s past, present, and future. These objects rise from and sink into the sculpture, hinting at how memory surfaces and recedes. Among them are statistical diagrams, a memory drum from the first computer, the covid-19 molecule, a handmade vase by George Washington Carver and a seed sorter. Not everything is visible at all times to every viewer—an analogy for the elusive nature of memory.

photo credit: Chris Gannon

Hive Mind celebrates Iowa State University’s legacy- its contributions and reverberations across critical disciplines such as science, technology and agriculture. Its genesis is its visual reference to the round hay bale, an innovation developed in the 1960’s by ISU professor Wesley Buchele. Like so many other breakthroughs, this one invention catalyzed its respective industry and revolutionized the act of harvesting..

photo credit: Chris Gannon