An illuminated guardian for Waller Creek: part animal, part landscape, and part local legend.
Status
Completed commission
Year
2023
Place
Waller Creek · Austin, Texas
Commission / context
Waterloo Greenway Conservancy · Creek Show
Jake’s role
Concept and delivery through ALT
Leadership scope
Coordinated concept, graphic and fabrication design, budget, and engineering through installation.
90,000Reported Creek Show event attendance
Outdoor + illuminatedDesigned for weather, service, and heavy public use
World-building idea
Creek Keeper translates environmental memory into a civic-scale character. The work had to feel immediate and generous while surviving weather, crowds, public-park conditions, and the technical demands of an illuminated outdoor installation.
01The civic brief
Give the creek a guardian people can approach.
For Waterloo Greenway’s Creek Show, the central idea became a creature with the presence of public sculpture and the invitation of a theatrical character. Its silhouette reads from across the site; its glowing interior pulls visitors closer.
02Character as infrastructure
Folklore carried by engineering.
The design joined form, lighting, diffusion, power, mounting, waterproofing, and serviceability. The technical system was not separate from the idea. It was what allowed the creature to become a dependable part of a heavily used public event.
03Public encounter
Built to hold attention at festival scale.
Over ten days, a record-setting 90,000 people came to Creek Show 2023. Showing Creek Keeper to that many visitors was a lot of fun, and its public debut was an unequivocal success.
Reflective surfaces, ultraviolet color, and suspended forms create a complete hidden ecosystem.
The interior rewards exploration from ground plane to canopy.
Visitors discover the environment by looking up, moving through, and pointing things out to one another.
A sustained visitor line made the installation's public draw visible throughout Creek Show.
Projection, fluorescence, texture, and fabricated forms make the creature feel alive at close range.
Jake Rosenberg at Creek Keeper's public debut.Project record
The Creek Keeper: Jake Rosenberg, Clayton Lillard, Mateo Gutierrez, Chris Haddad, Chandler Goen, and Liza Fishbone
Original concept: Jake Rosenberg / ALT
What this proves
Jake can turn civic meaning into an approachable public landmark while directing the technical realities of outdoor delivery.
Public art · 2023
