Wopo Holup, an artist whose works have been walked past, walked on and touched by countless people in public spaces in New York; Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; and elsewhere, died on Sept 29 in Manhattan. She was 80.

The cause was lung cancer, her husband, the artist Peter Brown, said. She had been living and working in New York and in Lyons, Colo., near Boulder.

Ms. Holup created “River That Flows Two Ways,” the 37 panels set in the sea wall railing at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. She embedded a sculptural representation of the Missouri River into the floor of a police academy in Kansas City, the artwork “flowing” through the lobby and out across the 15-acre property. She made sculptural birds for a train station in Denver and a greenway in Lowell, Mass., and a mural of grasses and trees for an underpass in Queens, reflective of her abiding interest in nature.

Her works, said Jenny Dixon, director of the Noguchi Museum in Queens and a longtime friend, were always grounded in research.