18 Art Installations Yield a Strong Sense of Place

Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel & Convention Center, Cherokee, North Carolina

The details: The massive Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel & Convention Center, which boasts an 83,000-squar- foot convention center, 725 guestrooms, and 74 suites, demands an art installation on a scale as large as itself. Working with Atlanta-based design firm BLUR Workshop, art consultant Faulkner+Locke tasked North Carolina sculptor Carl Peverall with creating a dynamic centerpiece. The result is a two-and-a-half-ton sculpture made of Tennessee Sandstone that was sourced by Peverall from a local quarry. “Part of the journey was finding the stones that would create the composition,” says BLUR interior designer Debbie Wong. Drawing inspiration from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians origin story, which tells of the formation of earth and its mountains, the sculpture transports guests to the nearby Smoky Mountains.