Step inside a giant multicolored water drop at Lenexa’s Mill Creek Streamway Park and the side panels create shimmering prisms of light, much like an oil slick in the sun. Then notice 81 strands of rope arching over a bridge, and braided together until they become a single massive twist that ends at a metal shutoff valve borrowed from WaterOne.
Maybe this contemporary artwork illustrates rivulets and streams merging into a large river that serves as our drinking water source. Maybe the various colors of rope reflect our watershed’s many challenges, such as fertilizer runoff, herbicides and trash. Or maybe the rope stands for the convergence of caretakers—water treatment chemists, stormwater ecologists, engineers and others—who join together to counteract the contaminants.
All of the above, says artist Matt Dehaemers, who created the temporary installation titled “Is It Water Under the Bridge?” during an Art and Natural Resources Residency with Johnson County Park and Recreation District. Additional support from the Johnson County Stormwater Management Program contributed to his piece, which spans Mill Creek in Lenexa, just north of Prairie Star Parkway.
After a three-week immersion into the world of water management, which Dehaemers calls “mind-blowingly complex,” he decided to use PVC tubing and polycarbonate sheets layered with dichroic film to create the colorful water drop. Community volunteers helped braid some 3,500 feet of polypropylene rope before the artwork was dedicated in June.
Although he first studied painting and printmaking, Dehaemers later realized this type of art was not the final product for him. “Everything I was drawing I wanted to see 3D in a sculpture,” he says. Dehaemers is best known now for his large public art installations. He especially enjoys repurposing materials, taking conventional things and elevating them to art objects to create “a powerful chain reaction event.”
He’s not sure what will happen to the water drop in the future, but through December 2024, it will remain in the park, where thousands of bikers, runners and walkers pass by.
“Hopefully, it’ll be up long enough to see snow on it,” Dehaemers says.
