Cloud Embrace sculpture (Bricktown)

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Cloud Embrace is a steel cloud-shaped sculpture about 24 feet high, 40 feet wide and 9 feet deep at United Way Plaza in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, dedicated on 11 March 2026. Creative Machines designed it; visitors can stand inside.

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Cloud Embrace sculpture (Bricktown)

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Approximate location · 35.463° N, 97.507° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Oklahoma City has a steel cloud you can walk into. Cloud Embrace was dedicated on 11 March 2026 in the reimagined United Way Plaza in Bricktown, replacing a fountain that previously stood there, according to News 9.

The city says it is made of perforated, heavy-gauge steel with a durable painted finish and measures approximately 24 feet high by 40 feet wide and 9 feet deep, big enough for groups of people to stand inside. Creative Machines, a design and fabrication company led by Joseph O’Connell, designed it. The city’s release says the team numbered nearly 30 professionals; O’Connell told News 9 that about five people spent several months welding it, after the idea began as a simple sketch meant to resemble a cartoon cloud.

Light is the point. Multi-coloured panels cast shadows within the piece and around the plaza by day, and the city says colour-changing LED lighting takes over at night. In the city’s release, O’Connell called the ever-changing sky an apt metaphor for how the OKC community has been shaped. Skylight openings with dichroic acrylic panels refract sunlight, which he called “almost like a kinetic sculpture and a light show without moving parts or electronics during the day.”

Visit OKC and the Inasmuch Foundation commissioned it and gave it to the City of Oklahoma City; the city says it was funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act and an Inasmuch Foundation grant. Mayor David Holt called it “very iconic.”

The plaza, at Reno and Walnut Avenue beside the Bricktown Canal and Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, is run by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. Come both by day and after dark.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A walk-in steel sculpture in a pedestrian plaza; groups can stand inside for photos. Panels cast coloured shadows by day and LED lighting runs at night, according to the City of Oklahoma City (March 2026). The plaza is operated by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

ACCESS

United Way Plaza at Reno and Walnut Avenue, Bricktown, Oklahoma City, beside the Bricktown Canal and Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. The city says it can also be seen by car and from the OKC Streetcar.

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Chickasaw Warrior

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

A giant bronze Chickasaw Warrior, as the Chickasaw Nation names it, stands at the entrance of Chickasaw Community Bank's headquarters, 7500 W. Memorial Road, Oklahoma City (Oklahoma Business Voice, November 2024). The Chickasaw Nation first unveiled a nine-foot Chickasaw Warrior in Ada in 2005 and has reproduced it across Oklahoma.

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1.0 km away

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