Iowa State University: Acquires Hive Mind
Hive Mind installed at Iowa State University in Ames
Hive Mind, a large-scale outdoor sculpture fabricated in bronze and glass, 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. Objects rise from and sink into the sculpture, hinting at how memory surfaces and recedes. Not everything is visible at all times to every viewer—an analogy for the elusive nature of memory.
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. Positioned at the heart of campus, where all pathways converge, Hive Mind contains embedded clear glass objects that represent ISU’s past, present, and future.
A solo exhibition entitled Middle of the Story will be on view in the Christian Petersen Art Museum at Iowa State University beginning August 25, 2025.