Waller Creek Conservancy Creek Show Returns in 2018

From November 9-17, 2018, an ongoing presentation of light-based public artworks will light up Austin, Texas’ river walk for the 5th annual Waller Creek Conservancy Creek Show. Running concurrently with the East Austin Studio Tour, the show features pieces by local artists who each play on themes of location and the site of the creek. Past exhibitions have varied in terms of presentation: from installations installed on pedestrian pathways, to pieces situated in the creek, to a huge Mosasaur skeleton eerily lit and hung under a bridge by artist Jules Buck Jones. In a 2018 article for Glasstire, Gene Fowler wrote of Jones’ installation:

“In 2016, Creek Show commissioned Invisible and Absolute, a work of sculpture by the Austin painter and installation artist Jules Buck Jones. He chose to create an extinct sea lizard, the mosasaur, which swam through Central Texas’ shallow seas some 65 to 100 million years ago. A nearly complete mosasaur skeleton, discovered in Onion Creek by UT geology students in 1935, is on exhibit at Austin’s Texas Memorial Museum. Per an artist’s statement: ‘Extinct creatures like the mosasaur are simultaneously very real and very not, only present today in the form of fossilized bone. ‘Invisible and Absolute’ asks the question: What is scarier? A 40’ monster or extinction itself?'”

This year’s Creek Show features six site-specific pieces installed on the pedestrian walkway between 9th and 11th streets. Since the installations benefit from darkness, the show will be on view nightly from 6-10PM. The artists and design teams featured in this edition of the show include:

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CAMPBELL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE + TAB LABS
Drophouse Design
Lemmo Architecture and Design
Perkins+Will
Polis

The Creek Show is just one project organized by the Waller Creek Conservancy that aims to bring Austinites back to the parks and other spaces around the creek. Though it is only open for two weeks, the show brings in thousands of people, showing them a side of Austin they might not have known about. Another recent project by the Conservancy includes collaborations with The Contemporary Austin to show large-scale outdoor works by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

The 2018 Waller Creek Conservancy Creek Show will also feature family-friendly interactive activities and games, and nightly concerts. For more information, go here.