Brace yourself, the red ball is coming.

The RedBall Project, considered the world’s longest-running street work, which has traveled from Paris to Abu Dhabi, Tokyo to the U.S. and back, will bounce into Northwest Arkansas September 11 through 15 and be on view 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

The artwork is an enormous red ball that is 15 feet tall — about the height of a semi-tractor trailer — and 250 pounds. It was made by artist Kurt Perschke in 2001 for a citywide exhibition in St. Louis focused on beautifying certain parts of the city with the use of art. It’s been rolling ever since.

The work plays with architecture since it’s scaled off the height of bodies, being more than twice the height of the average person.

“It’s sort of the right size to not quite fit a lot of places,” Perschke said by phone in July. “That’s the goal.”

According to a press release, Red Ball’s first stop will be 112 W. Central Ave. Bentonville, where renderings suggest it will be suspended in the alley next to Meteor Guitar Gallery. The following day it will roll westward to 119 W. University St. in Siloam and spend the day at the Crown Hotel Apartments, less than a mile from John Brown University and Bob Henry Park.

On Sept. 13, Red Ball will grace the art court at 227 W. Dickson Street in Fayetteville and Shiloh Square pavilion on Emma Ave. in Springdale the next day. It will conclude its Northwest Arkansas tour with a second day in Bentonville at 130 W. Central Ave.

During Red Ball’s run, MIXD Gallery in Rogers will celebrate the incoming art with a special exhibition for the same dates, Sept. 11 through 15, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The RedBall Project’s local visits were made possible by the Municipal Arts Alliance, a project of CACHE, the Creative Arkansas Community Hub and Exchange.

CACHE will host a talk and public art panel with Red Ball artist Kurt Perschke at 21C Museum Hotel 6 p.m. Sept. 11.

While each site visit is a completely different experience, there are some patterns in audience engagement, Perschke said. They are just expressed in different ways based on where they live. Australians were more physical with it, jumping on it for more than an hour. In France, where Red Ball has visited many times, they almost never touched it, but sat around it and chatted. In Tokyo and Taiwan, everyone wanted a picture with it.

Now that it’s been running so long, “there’s a sense of intensity, super fans who would come every single day (even when) it’s a long project, two or three weeks,” he said.

If you show up and ask questions, don’t expect to get too many answers from staff on site. Perschke wants you to come to your own conclusions about it.

“People want to put it in a box and move on,” Perschke said. “When someone asks, (we think about) how to give information without answering. It’s here today, tomorrow … it lets people absorb the work.”