My Role

What we ask artists to do is hard. We ask artists to thoroughly absorb complex agency operations and to create an artwork in their own voice which is evocative not only the site, context and history but also of staff and community voices.   

In this and other regards Those Who Carry Water is nothing short of exceptional. No artist has requested and been provided with more access to SFPUC’s regional water system and the results of Walter’s profound meditation on water and people is on clear display in this poetic and thoughtful artwork. 

For Those Who Carry Water I built executive and project-team alignment, participated in artist selection, worked with the artist to establish site and project context, and provided creative review and approval throughout the development of the artwork.

The Artwork

Those Who Carry Water by Walter Kitundu is a celebration of the workers and community members whose lives are intertwined with the water system in San Francisco. It is a recognition of the water itself, and the wide array of communities it nurtures and sustains as it cycles through our lives. In addition to the water department workers and neighborhood residents the artwork honors plant, mammal, fish, bird, and insect communities, as well as the arts ecosystem it exists in. It remembers the past and offers some hopeful guidance for the times to come.

Press

• Artwork narrative

• Final Design

Project Team

• Artwork Client Representative: Blair Randall, SFPUC

• Artwork Project Manager: Jackie von Treskow, SF Arts Commission

• Capital Project Management: Rob Mau and Shelby Campbell, SFPUC