A 42-foot-tall chandelier made of light and sound now towers over Lake Hefner Parkway in Oklahoma City, and the 23-year-old who helped build it started out just messing around with metal in his father's woodshop. Ian Brockwell, now a production manager at the Oklahoma City fabrication company Artform, helped design the sculpture that translates recorded sound waves into glowing acrylic art for Hearts for Hearing, a nonprofit hearing health organization and clinic.
The sculpture honors Hearts for Hearing's mission and its Celebration of Sound expansion project, according to The Oklahoman. It sits at the nonprofit's clinic, visible to motorists along Lake Hefner Parkway, and lights up at night, shifting through colors and patterns. Brockwell and his team translated sound frequencies into acrylic discs ranging from two to six feet in diameter, mounted around an aluminum mast, using an audio recording of someone saying “celebration of sound” as part of the piece's design.
From Woodshop Helper to Production Manager at 23
Brockwell began welding while working with his father on custom woodworking projects, and he has said it was “a lot of fun making stuff with my hands.” He credits his parents, Alison and Sean Brockwell, as an inspiration for his path into fabrication. After graduating from Southmoore High School in 2021, he enrolled the following year in the welding program at Francis Tuttle Technology Center, where instructor Matt Manaugh taught him the trade, specifically pursuing metal fabrication for artistic reasons rather than industrial ones.
The 42-foot sound wave sculpture sits inside a glass tower roughly 47 to 53 feet tall facing Lake Hefner Parkway, a design by Oklahoma City architectural firm Bockus Payne meant to serve as a visual beacon for the clinic's campus addition. The firm designed the expansion to engage sensory design through both light and acoustics. Brockwell began at Artform as an intern before transitioning to a full-time position in 2023, and he now oversees scheduling, purchasing, training, budgeting and client communication while supervising 13 employees.
A Cat Sculpture Named Big Tony Paved the Way
Before tackling a 42-foot public art piece, Brockwell built something considerably smaller and more personal: a sculpture called Big Tony, inspired by his mother's late orange tabby cat. He spent about 280 hours across eight months on the piece, which weighed 37 pounds when finished, and entered it in the SkillsUSA welding sculpture competition, where it won first place at the state level. Big Tony now sits on display on his parents' fireplace.
Along the way, Brockwell learned low-voltage lighting wiring and the software needed to program customized light displays, skills that carried directly into the Hearts for Hearing project. He has said that Francis Tuttle and Artform allowed him to grow as fast as he wanted, and that creating a custom sculpture nobody else has is his dream.
The Expansion Behind the Glowing Tower
The sculpture is the visual capstone of a much larger project. The Oklahoma State Legislature appropriated $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds through the Oklahoma State Department of Health to support Hearts for Hearing's facility and service expansion, aimed at expanding hearing healthcare access across all 77 Oklahoma counties, according to Oklahoma.gov.
That funding supports a 30,800-square-foot expansion that expands the nonprofit's adult audiology services and adds a dedicated hearing research suite led by researcher Dr. René Gifford, per the same organization's announcement. Hearts for Hearing itself traces back to a 2000 Oklahoma state law requiring universal newborn hearing screenings; the nonprofit was established in 2003 to provide hearing technology and therapy when insurance coverage fell short, according to MetroFamily Magazine.
Lighting Up for Every Patient
The glass tower sculpture lights up every time someone receives the gift of hearing at the clinic, visually celebrating each patient, MetroFamily Magazine reports. Hearts for Hearing held a grand opening for its new space that featured the sculpture, including a lighting ceremony and free hearing tests for attendees.
Brockwell's employer has a history of collaborating with Bockus Payne on prominent public art. Artform previously designed and engineered a suspended kinetic sculpture with rotating translucent panels and DMX lighting for the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center College of Medicine atrium, according to a video posted by Artform on Facebook.
A Bigger Story for Oklahoma's Trade Workforce
Brockwell's rise from an adult welding student in 2022 to a production manager leading a 13-person team is a local example of a young worker advancing in the trade. His path shows how welding training can lead to a production-management role.
