Water Tower

This goes back to my ongoing fascination with forms and structures, culminating with my series of “structural experimentations” (see my artist statement for the full definition).

Water Tower is a celebration of - you guessed it - water, the element I feel like I would control just because of this one online quiz I took many years ago in college. Around the same time, I was taking a course called Gardens, Palaces and Pavilions, focusing on the arts and architecture of medieval Islamic cultures, and learned about how these civilizations harnessed water and mastered irrigation systems, transforming their palaces into oases in the desert, opulent environments complete with luxuriant bodies of water such as fountains, bathhouses and pools. This image recreates such an environment in terms of innovation and grandeur, but it is not representative of a specific Islamic place or setting.

In the original drawing, rendered with pen and ink on paper, I penciled two simple arcs in graphite to create the faintest impression of water, keeping it ethereal compared to the rich and fully realized colourful plumage in the digitized version. The attention is thus more drawn towards the magical golden trails shimmering in the wake of an enchanted carpet and the confident girl riding it. However, none of this would be possible without the nourishing, life-giving source stored in their miraculous tower, feeding the verdant greenery in which the structure’s base is nestled and every part of the city the highly sophisticated hydraulic system is able to reach.