Intake Facility River Wall

Click images to enlarge

The "River Wall" is a relief sculpture that incorporates poetry and prose about water and the adjacent river. The text on the wall was composed by local, national and international authors. It invites viewers to contemplate their relationships to water and to this particular site. In this reach of the Sacramento River, water flows in two directions depending on tides. The large script that reads "River" both forwards and backwards is inspired by this two way flow, as the water makes its way from the Sierras to the Delta.

Internationally known Northern California artist Paul Kos was commissioned to create this stunning piece of public art. Paul has completed several large sculptural walls in the Bay Area and Sacramento, as well as large scale public pieces in several locations in Europe and throughout the US. He exhibits his art widely and is represented in the collections of several major museums.

1. Sea. See you soon, Sierra.
   — Paul Kos
   

2. The river flows not past us. But through us
   — John Muir
   

3. I know now it takes many many years to write a river, a twist of water asking a question
   — Carl Sandburg
   

4. water carries the memory of mountains into the sea's forgetting
   — Susan Stewart
   

5. ... the world is mud-liscious... puddle wonderful...
   — E. E. Cummings
   

6. Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe
   — Anonymous
   

7. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was
   — Toni Morrison
   

8. does time have backwaters and eddies where things change most slowly and rapids?
   — Rebecca Solnit
   

9. In one drop of water are found all the secrets of the oceans
   — Kahlil Gibran
   

10. Yes, as everyone knows, water and meditation are wedded forever
    — Herman Melville
    

11. silence is to snow as tears are to rain
    — Susan Stewart
    

12. nineteen tundra swans
    — Albert DeSilver
    

13. go quietly, alone: no harm will befall you
    — John Muir
    

On the side panels are a collection of water-related words from various glossaries compiled by Susie Wallenstein and edited by Paul Kos.