Rigidized® Metals Corporation Helps Bring an 80-Foot Sculpture to Life at Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium

Artist and Design Educator Shasti O’Leary-Soudant Builds a 22,000-Piece Tribute to Every Buffalo Bills Win in Aluminum

Suspended 95 feet above the atrium at Highmark Stadium, an 80-foot sculpture of interlocking, jewel-bright footballs hangs from the building’s central beams — a tribute to every opponent the Buffalo Bills have ever defeated, rendered in 3,984 pieces of engineered aluminum, held together by 19,920 rivets. It’s called BILLS WIN!, the work of artist and design educator Shasti O’Leary-Soudant, who says the entire design arrived fully formed in a 1 a.m. epiphany. It was built in close, hands-on collaboration with the fabrication team at Rigidized® Metals.

Shasti chose Rigidized®’s 1HM pattern for its organic, hammered texture — one she calls uncannily perfect for the subject: “the pattern looks EXACTLY like the pigskin texture of a pro football.” Nearly 4,000 individual pieces were laser-cut, rolled, and machined, then powder-coated in 35 colors, before Fabrication Project Manager Tom Schunk engineered the connection that let each piece hang safely from the atrium’s beams.

“Tom Schunk came up with such an elegant solution that it made the strands look like jewels. I was ecstatic with the final result.”

— Shasti O’Leary-Soudant

Hohl Industries handled the rigging that carried the finished sections into place — the final, highest-stakes step in a project with zero room for error. BILLS WIN! is also a milestone in a twelve-year partnership between Shasti and Rigidized® Metals.

Download the complete case study on this project, here.