experience
WaterWork logo
SEPTEMBER 26 & 27, 2025

Waterwork 2025

See the iconic façade of the historic Seaholm Intake Facility transform into a vibrant canvas of art, light, and motion. WaterWork, a unique, immersive art experience co-created by The Trail Conservancy and Design Austin, that celebrates the dynamic relationship between Austin’s urban landscape and its cherished natural environment. 

The immersive display will take place at dusk on Friday, September 26, and Saturday, September 27, 2025.

how to see the show

WaterWork is free and open to the public. The show will be projected on the side of the historic Seaholm Intake Facility with multiple viewing locations across Lady Bird Lake from the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail. Ideal viewing locations include:

  • Auditorium Shores
  • Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge

If you choose to watch the show on land, arrive early to make sure you get a good spot!

The Seaholm Intake Facility sits on the edge of Lady Bird Lake, allowing for an incredible lakefront view of the show.  Viewers can either rent or bring their personal watercraft to watch. Viewing space will fill up, plan ahead and hit the water before showtime.

Note: Safety devices like lifejackets and watercraft lights are required.

For an elevated viewing experience, our boat cruises will return this year, with a limited number of tickets available beginning August 5.

Friday Tickets

Saturday Tickets

The Loren Hotel will host extended hours for their cafe, offering cocktail and dining options for viewers before the show.

The artists

artist profiles

Using state-of-the-art projection mapping technology, the Seaholm Waterfront will come alive with captivating artworks from fifteen talented Austin artists: Jasna Boudard, Luna Davis, Tova Katzman, Leslie Kell, Faiza Kracheni, Yuliya Lanina, Emily Lee, Paloma Mayorga, Katy McCarthy, R. Eric McMaster, Britt Mosely, Phoebe Shuman-Goodier, Topher Sipes, Tiffany Smith, and Ana Trevino.

Each artist’s work explores and illuminates the vibrant coexistence between Austin’s bustling cityscape and its restorative beauty of natural spaces.

the historic canvas

Seaholm Waterfront

The Seaholm Intake is an iconic Art Deco building that once was the pump house for the Seaholm Power Plant, which operated until 1989. In 1996, Austin City Council authorized the decommissioning of the plant and all the associated buildings in preparation for future adaptive reuse.

Jasna Boudard is a French-Bangladeshi new media artist based in Austin, Texas. She creates immersive visual experiences using photography, video, and projection to explore movement, light, and connection. Raised across three continents, her multicultural background deeply informs her creative work and her philosophy of unity in diversity. Jasna holds an MFA and has exhibited internationally. She was the first Artist in Residence at the Thinkery Museum and is the co-founder of MetaCaustics, a collaborative duo specializing in new media installations. She is also the founder of Travel Weddings, a photo and video brand serving multicultural couples around the world.

Luna Davis (b. 1999, Austin, Texas) currently lives and works in Austin, TX primarily in mixed media ranging from acrylic sheeting, CRT TVs, video, stain glass, and sculpture. Her work encapsulates ideas of digital identity and traumas found in domestic spaces ranging from personal and universal experiences. Davis graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Studio Art in 2022. Recent projects include Inventory-ing, 2024, at the Contracommons Group in Bee Cave, TX, and GUTS+ 2024, as a part of an artist residency with the Museum of Human Achievement, in Austin, Texas. Davis has received grants from Austin Community College, including the Steve Kramer Scholarship in 2019, and has co-curated Facade, at the Visual Arts Center, and Portal Fishing, with Favored Channels in 2023.

Tova Katzman is a photo and video artist and educator. Using documentary and experimental approaches, her work stems from an interest in storytelling, the poetics of human geography, and embodied research around bodies of water. In 2017, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue an art and research project about the intersection of daily life and the Panama Canal. She remained based in Panama for six years, working as a freelance photographer and community project facilitator, as well as the co-founder of La Junta, a collective for women photographers working in Panama. Her work has been shown internationally, and she has participated in exhibitions and panels, including with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, MassArt, Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Panama, TEOR/ética in Costa Rica, and the 46th National Artists’ Salon of Colombia. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin and a BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art.

Leslie Kell is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the dynamic relationship between urban spaces and the natural world. Utilizing an original technique that synthesizes design, photography, and video, Kell has created a distinctive body of work that transcends conventional boundaries.

Her recent participation in the Apropos exhibit at the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum showcased a seven-minute cinemagraph that paid homage to Charles Umlauf’s legacy. This piece integrated her photographs and videos into the patterns of her drawings, celebrating Umlauf’s figurative sculptures within the tranquil surroundings of the sculpture garden.

Kell’s cinemagraphs have also been featured on digital displays at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where her moving art, based on photographic compositions remastered with video overlays, has captivated travelers since 2019.

Based in Austin, Texas, Kell actively contributes to the regional arts community. She serves on the boards of two nonprofit arts organizations, all while maintaining an active schedule of her shows.

Faiza Kracheni (she/her) is a multidisciplinary media artist, musician, and cultural worker from East Austin, Texas. Self-taught and shaped by punk and DIY ethos, her work resists conventional definitions of artistic legitimacy and value. Working across film, sound, installation, and music, Faiza explores the complexities of memory, belonging, perception, and the human condition—often using art as a tool for resistance and reclamation.

In addition to her artistic practice, Faiza serves as Executive Director of Motion Media Arts Center (home to Austin School of Film and Austin Cinemaker Space), where she has secured millions in funding to expand access to creative resources and build sustainable, equity-centered programs. She represents District 9 as a City of Austin Arts Commissioner and sits on the UNESCO Media Arts Steering Committee, championing community access, creative infrastructure, and cultural visibility for future generations.

Yuliya Lanina is an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges traditional media with new technologies. Lanina holds an MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Purchase College. She is currently Assistant Professor of Practice at the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Emily Lee is an artist, writer, and community organizer from the Texas Gulf Coast. Working across a wide range of media, including sculpture, painting, video, photography, and text, Lee explores the limitations of language and vision.

Lee focuses on the intersection of ecology, language, and the senses, and is drawn to the dissonances between the three—how ecological issues, like climate change, stretch across vast spaces and deep time, evading the visual senses. She makes work that aims to attune the senses to such conditions and create space for sociality with the inanimate and non-human.

Paloma Mayorga is an interdisciplinary botanical artist working across photography, video, performance, installation, painting, and printmaking. Often using her own body as medium, Mayorga explores movement, place, and cultural identity in relation to the landscape and ancestral uses of plants. Her work draws on ecological stories, sensory experiences, and the memory held in landscapes to reflect how reconnecting with plants can help us become more attentive and responsible stewards of the land.

Mayorga earned a BA in Painting from the Sarofim School of Fine Arts at Southwestern University, and has gone on to exhibit her work across Texas and nationally. Most recently, her work was exhibited as part of the 2024 Texas Biennial in Houston, TX, ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI, Artpace in San Antonio, TX, The Contemporary Austin, and Big Medium in Austin, TX. Mayorga has also received the Emerging Artist Award from the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, Best Visual Artist by the Austin Chronicle Reader’s Poll, and Southwestern University’s 18 Under 40 Award. Currently, she acts as Curator for Coronado printstudio and serves on the Board of Directors for DORF and PrintAustin.

Katy McCarthy (she/her) is an artist, filmmaker, and educator based in Austin, Texas. She holds a BFA from UC Santa Barbara and an MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Arts program at Hunter College in New York. Her short films weave narratives that tell human stories backgrounded by social and environmental themes and have been screened at the Dallas International Film Festival’s Short Film Fest, Cindependent Film Festival, The Every Woman Biennial FIlm Festival, CUNY Film Festival, and NurtureART’s Single Channel: Video Art Festival. Her video works have been included in group shows at Tiger Strike Asteroid Gallery Los Angeles, Flux Factory, and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Museum, among other venues. She has been an artist-in-residence at Lighthouse Works, LMCC Governors Island, SOHO20 Residency Lab, Grin City, and The Wassaic Project. In 2018, Katy was the inaugural and sole recipient of the St. Elmo Fellowship at UT Austin. In 2021, she received the Austin Film Society short film grant for her short film “The Violinist.” She is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

R. Eric McMaster’s practice involves video, sound, performance, installation, and sculpture, exploring themes of separation, coalescence, and site. Experiences are jolted in some way, be it through environment or situation, with works reframing the familiar to suspend our material or cultural assumptions.

R. Eric McMaster is an Austin-based artist whose works have been exhibited at The Blanton Museum of Art, The Contemporary Austin, The Blaffer Museum, Hiroshima MOCA, The Contemporary (San Antonio), Locust Projects, Vox Populi, Antenna Gallery (New Orleans), and the Lawndale Art Center, among others. He is the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Art Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and numerous residencies.

Britt Wilder Moseley is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Denver, CO., and is currently based in Austin, TX. He received his BFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in 2012 and his MFA from the University of Texas, Austin. His work has been shown at the VAC (TX), Shedshows (TX), Creek Show (TX), Mass Gallery (TX), Folly Tree Arboretum (NY), Hammer Museum (CA), St. Ann’s Warehouse (NY), Dixon Place (NYC), LaMama ETC (NYC), Mattress Factory (PA), Special Special (NYC), and the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (NY), among other venues. He has received grants from the New York City Arts Corps. (NY) and Wavefarm (NY), and was an artist in residence at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred College (NY) and the St. Ann’s Warehouse (NY).

Phoebe is an interdisciplinary artist from Rhode Island. She holds a BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received the John A. Chironna Scholarship and the Paul Krot Memorial Scholarship for excellence in photography. Her project, Bad Dogs, won the 2024 Film Photo Student Award sponsored by Kodak and has been featured by Fotofilmic, Musée Magazine, and F-Stop Magazine. Phoebe was one of Review Santa Fe’s 100 featured photographers at Center in 2024. She recently received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was the 2023-2025 recipient of the Russell Lee Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Photography and the 2023-2025 William and Bettye Nowlin Endowed Presidential Fellow. Phoebe explores accumulation, waste, and debris from the perspectives of art, psychology, and American consumerism. Her practice involves serious play: transfiguring trash, negotiating function, and making magic from the everyday.

Topher Sipes is an Austin-based multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, and immersive 3D designer. He works at the intersection of digital media, ecology, and embodiment, creating technodelic experiences through projection mapping, virtual reality performance, and public art. His work explores flow states, fluid dynamics, dream symbolism, and eco-geology. Clients include Google and the Houston Symphony, with work featured at Creek Show, in Las Vegas, and at festivals and conferences nationwide. With a foundation in drawing and environmental interpretation, Topher co-founded MetaCaustics with Jasna Boudard to craft light-based environments that reconnect audiences to nature, presence, and transformation.

Tiffany Smith is a media artist and educator whose work explores how technology shapes memory and perception. Through video, installation, and interactive media, she constructs immersive environments where the real and the simulated collapse into one another. Her practice investigates hyperreality, fantasy, and entropy to reimagine how we navigate technologically mediated worlds.

Ana Treviño is a visual artist and educator living and working in Austin, TX. Her practice deviates from the rules of filmmaking that are informed by cultural histories. She uses a feminist lens to think about the concept of borders, whether visible, invisible, or blurred. Her connection to the U.S./Mexico border deeply influences her work and the stories with which she engages. Through video installation and performance, she explores how she can reclaim subjugated narratives. She received her MFA in Art and Technology from the University of Florida and a BS in Television and Film Production from Florida International University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Studio Art at Texas State University.

Inspiring Creativity on the Butler Trail

Arts + Culture Program

The Arts + Culture Plan for the Butler Trail is a transformative initiative to enrich our community. Programming empowers local artists, amplifies diverse voices, and creates vibrant, inclusive spaces that reflect our city’s rich heritage. 

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