South of Bellingham’s Chuckanut mountains, the Skagit Valley unfolds into acres of farmland that extend toward distant horizons. This quiet, rural environment is home to fields of crops and a scattering of small towns.

Near one of those towns, an old farm house sits near the road, surrounded by an assortment of outbuildings — 10 in all, counting the outhouses. Next to its traditional front porch stands an eight-foot circular figure with red, green and amber pulsating lights. From a distance, the rhythmic pattern of colors might be mistaken for a string of traffic lights or a traffic accident.

But it’s actually a sign that nationally-renowned artist Sheila Klein has returned to the Skagit valley; a place she calls “magical.”

Klein is well-known in the art world for her large-scale sculptures. Much of her work, like “Urband” in her front yard, utilizes patterns of light. More than 20 years ago, she was a young artist, a self-proclaimed hippie, living in LaConner and working in textile art. Despite a personal attachment to the Skagit valley, Klein left in the 1970s to seek bigger and better opportunities in Seattle and later in Los Angeles.

“I used to do street fairs,” Klein said.

Today, Klein, 46, is a long way from street fairs. She and husband Ries Niemi, also an artist, discovered that Los Angeles gave them the opportunity to develop their art on a grand scale. Klein has several major civic projects to her credit and more in the works. One of her most famous sculptures sits atop a control tower at the Los Angeles International airport and was constructed and engineered at a cost of somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000.

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