Bal Harbour Village has brought Jon-Paul Wheatley’s monumental Badly Drawn Ball sculpture to Bal Harbour Village Beach, where the oversized work now sits at 96th Street beside the Atlantic Ocean. The installation marks the next chapter of the 12 Pentagons project following its June debut at Bal Harbour Shops and extends the work into a public setting open to residents and visitors.
ART
Wheatley founded 12 Pentagons as a football design studio focused on one-of-one balls and unconventional constructions. His work connects sporting equipment, collectible design and sculpture, and his projects have led to collaborations with FIFA, adidas, Pepsi, Burberry and Apple.
The Badly Drawn Ball began with a simple problem: drawing a football from memory often produces warped panels, uneven lines and distorted proportions. Wheatley spent four years developing a physical ball that could preserve those mistakes in three dimensions. In October 2024, 12 Pentagons asked its audience to draw a football from memory in three minutes. More than 5,000 submissions followed, giving the studio a large archive of irregular shapes and common errors.
The final design uses 50 uneven panels and changes appearance from every angle. A paper-grain finish helps the surface resemble a sketch transferred directly from the page, while recycled polyurethane gives the ball its performance material. The construction uses a seamless, thermo-bonded finish and maintains a perfectly round Size 5 form despite its deliberately awkward visual structure.
Wheatley translated the same idea into the large sculpture now installed in Bal Harbour. At this scale, the warped geometry becomes an architectural object, turning the familiar football shape into a public artwork built around imperfection, memory and participation.
Bal Harbour Village introduced the installation during its 80th anniversary year. The project forms part of the destination’s cultural programming and brings contemporary art into a setting associated with travel, hospitality and the coast. The sculpture remains on view through July 27. The Bal Harbour installation gives the Badly Drawn Ball its largest public format to date, carrying a design shaped by thousands of imperfect sketches into a shared outdoor space.
