Soon after the gates opened on the first day of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 14 there were already lines of fans waiting to get into and take photos in front of Spectra, the seven-story structure with rainbow-colored windows and 360-degree views of the festival grounds.

Spectra made its debut at the Coachella in 2018 and is one of the various large-scale art pieces that make up the landscape of artwork on display each year.

In many ways, these pieces are as integral to the festival as the music lineup.

“It’s amazing what it’s become,” said U.K.-based artist Patrick O’Mahony as he stood outside his now iconic creation. “Originally it was supposed to be here one year and here we are five years later. You never know how people are going to react to it and that’s the amazing thing and the terrifying thing when you first put a piece out there.”

O’Mahony designed Spectra in 2016 and what started as a sketch is now something festivalgoers flock to for memorable photos and to walk up its circular pathway to see the spectrum of colors change as they journey higher and higher. He credits the colorful simplicity behind the design as the reason it has become so popular.

“It was always based around the sunrise and the sunset of the Coachella Valley,” he said.

Also back this year at the fest is the equally iconic Balloon Chain, created by New York based Robert Bose. That started at Coachella in 2010.

Dozens of balloons are attached by fishing wire and arch up hundreds of feet into the sky, creating an artificial rainbow.  At night, the balloons are lit from the inside with LED lights. People are allowed to hold one end of the Balloon Chain, so it has also become a photo hotspot for fans who wait in long lines for those memorable snapshots.

“It’s been amazing. It’s one of those things where I had a moment where I thought it could be this awesome, and it’s actually become that,” said Bose, who originally came up with the idea for the piece at Burning Man when he tied a few balloons to his bike.

“They were tiny little chains of balloons and I remember seeing the shadow of me and my bicycle and all of the balloons in the sky going straight up and it was pretty impressive for something I accidently threw together in a few minutes,” he said.

New Art Installations

While these familiar art pieces and a few others return to Coachella year after year, the polo fields are also dotted with fresh and inspiring pieces. And those new artists know that their works have the possibility of becoming Coachella landmarks like Bose’s balloons and the Spectra structure.

“I’m really grateful and over the moon about being part of this. When people see my artwork I hope they feel a sense of awe and maybe spark something from their imagination,” said KumKum Fernando, one of the four new artists at the festival this year.

He created three towering, colorful figures that may look like just giant robots or action figures, but they have a much deeper meaning. The piece is called “The Messengers” and it’s made up of three monolithic figures that are between 75 and 80-feet-tall. They were inspired by South Asian mythology and Sri Lankan folk lore.

“I was always drawn to the supernatural,” he explained. “We have stories of flying machines and portals and giants and all this kind of stuff, so with my artwork what I try to do is combine these worlds.”

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Like the other art on the festival grounds, his piece transforms at night when spotlights illuminate the figures.

“Because the sculptures are so big, when you’re there it seems like you are surrounded by these beings that have come from another dimension to celebrate peace, love and music with you,” said the Sri Lankan-born artist, who lives and works in Vietnam.

Also making his debut at the festival is French-born Vincent Leroy whose bold and colorful piece is titled “Molecular Cloud.” This installation is made up of giant pink and reflective spheres attached together to form a cloud-like object. With the help of hidden wheels the shapes move and spin at night as light projections add to the motion.

Güvenç Özel–Cyber, a Turkish architect and artist who created a 60-foot-tall walk-through piece called “Holoflux,” is also happy to have his work at the festival and to see fans interact with it.

“The form of the structure is like a loop, so it appears to be this continuous multi-directional loop so you can go underneath it and around it,” Özel said. “The concept of the piece is about connectedness and it is about thinking about the connection between technology and nature.”

At night, real-time projections are splashed onto the piece, that movement making it come to life when the sun goes down.

It’s also a piece that Özel feels has the potential to return to the festival and offer something new each year.

“I think what is great about what we built is that the sculpture becomes almost this kind of surface where different kinds of animated videos could be projected upon, so this is certainly something that we can update and change and customize every year depending on the cultural currents,” Özel said.

Rounding off the crew of new artists is Los Angeles-based Maggie West who created a garden of 20 massive steel structures ranging from six to 56-feet tall. To create the artwork, West photographed a variety of plants in different color schemes and reproduced her floral photographs on structures for a piece she calls “Eden.”

Despite their size, the various soft and warm color hues give the structure a softer, more delicate appearance.

“Coachella is an iconic music festival and as an artist I pay close attention to the art they do every year and it’s an incredible honor to be given the opportunity to build something like this,” West said.

Raffi Lehrer, the art curator for the festival, said all of the large-scale art pieces at Coachella need to meet two crucial criteria in order to connect with the audience.

“I think when a piece is successful is when a 22-year-old who hasn’t spent much time in museums can come and immediately connect with the art and get something out of it, whatever that is,”  Lehrer said. “And at the same time, an art critic or architecture critic or design critic can come out and also have something to chew on.”

Coachella Art Staples

Returning alongside the Spectra and the balloon chain are some other pieces that have become synonymous with the festival like “Santa Fe,” New Mexico-based sculptor Don Kennel’s monumental animal sculptures, which he has brought to the festival’s campground site since 2013. His massive steel ram and galloping Mustang stand in the Coachella campground this year.

Raices Cultura, a grassroots arts and culture non-profit organization located in the city of Coachella is also back. The organization recruited and mentored 20 young people who live in the East Valley cities of Coachella, Indio, Mecca, Thermal and La Quinta to build an art installation for the festival campground.

They created an oversized red boombox that looks as if it could be broadcasting music throughout the camping area.

O’Mahony, the creator of Spectra, has been checking out the new artwork this season and said he was impressed.

“I think it’s really strong this year. I think they’re all very different, they all bring something very different. I think it’s one of the best years I’ve seen,” he said.

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