Autumn Spire

Autumn Spire by Eric Coolidge
Steel, CNC plasma-cut panels, mixed metals, 28’ tower

Rising like a cathedral frozen mid-bloom, Autumn Spire stands in the New Mexico desert as both a monument and a question mark. Its skeletal steel frame recalls the vertical reach of gothic architecture, yet its surfaces are cut with the precision of CNC plasma, a collision of centuries-old style and modern fabrication.

Brooklyn-based artist Eric Coolidge built the piece as an homage to the red maple—a tree that, in autumn, bursts into flame before surrendering to winter. For Coolidge, the maple is more than botanical beauty; it’s a symbol of endurance, change, and the cycles we all inhabit. “It feels like something is ending,” he says. “But as we pass from autumn into winter, so follows spring.”

The tower’s geometry is deliberate, balancing the organic and the engineered. Open panels invite light to pass through in shifting patterns, while the spire’s height draws the eye upward, evoking both aspiration and impermanence. There’s a tension here: the rigidity of steel against the softness of seasonal change, the permanence of metal against the inevitability of time.

Coolidge’s background in metalwork, mold making, blacksmithing, and large-scale installation converges in Autumn Spire. Since founding Eagle Rock Steel in Bushwick in 2015, he has specialized in custom metal fabrication, and here that expertise shows—in every weld, every cut, every joint engineered to withstand the elements yet age gracefully.

At Art City, Autumn Spire becomes part of a larger conversation between past and future. It’s a reminder that every season—personal, cultural, or planetary—leads somewhere. And while endings may be in the air, so is the promise of what comes next.