Trestle, Paula Castillo

PROVIDING THE FOLLOWING SERVICES: Design coordination, Materials research, Budget management, Engineering coordination and oversight, Fabricator bid process, Fabrication oversight, Installation oversight, Scheduling, Project close-out.

Paula Castillo was selected to create three iconic sculptures for the shared Denver Art Museum and Denver Central Library Campus in Denver, Colorado. The first sculpture in the series entitled Equis was installed in May 2024 outside of the Denver Central Library near the intersection of West 14th Ave. and Broadway. The second sculpture in the series, entitled Glyph, was installed in September 2024 outside the entrance to the Denver Art Museum’s Ponti building at the corner of West 14th Ave. and Bannock Street. The final sculpture of the series entitled Trestle will be installed on the plinth at 12th and Acoma facing the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building in 2025.

For this site, Castillo designed a truss-like gateway to illustrate how global actions build community and intertwine us. In this sculpture, a railroad bridge is used as a metaphor to remind the viewer that the railroads transformed Denver from a small town to a large and vibrant city. Thousands of hummingbird feathers fabricated out of stainless steel will be welded to the hummingbird-inspired trusses to reference the psychic link between the arc of Mexican labor and immigration on the railroads and the story of Denver’s emergence as one of our great American cities. The hummingbird-inspired vision connects the last piece of the story with the first through an Indigenous reference to the hummingbird—revered as a healer and associated with critical community-building traits like harmony, persistence, and integrity.

Digital rendering courtesy of Paula Castillo.