Public Art Proposal Display

Art Proposals for Treasure Island Water Resource Recovery Facility

Public Comment Period:

June 05, 2025 to June 18, 2025

Proposal Viewing Location

Proposals located at Ship Shape Community Center, 850 Avenue I, San Francisco CA, 94130.
Public Comment
View the Proposals

The San Francisco Arts Commission is conducting a review process to choose an artist to design three concrete façades of the Treasure Island Water Resource Recovery Facility's Maintenance and Administration Buildings along Eastside Avenue and the adjacent pedestrian and bicycle pathways. Interspersed between reflective, vertical glazed elements that connect the landscape to the sky, the façade-mounted artwork will consist of imagery on up to 2,850 square feet of precast concrete panels, which may be produced through the application of Graphic Concrete®, mosaic or ceramic tile, custom-formed reliefs, and/or other precast elements.

The goals of the TIWRRF public artwork are to connect viewers to an understanding of the flow and importance of water and wastewater in the TIWRRF, on and around the island, and throughout the Bay Area, more broadly; and to highlight the Treasure Island’s history, ecology, natural and marine environment, and the environmental stewardship of the SFPUC.

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This is how we flow

Cheryl Derricotte

25-0527 Board_Derricotte (1) (1).jpgThis is how we flow is a porcelain tile mural, designed for the 4,016 sf exterior walls of the new Treasure Island Water Resource Recovery Facility. The tiles will be fabricated with black and white framed borders in a textile pattern made from the shape of Treasure Island.

The imagery within the island shaped borders, includes the plant Claytonia Perfoliata aka Miner’s Lettuce. It was commonly named for its use by miners during the California Gold Rush. (See “Uses” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytonia_perfoliata).

Miner’s Lettuce is a native plant that grows throughout the City and County of San Francisco. The presence of the plant is a visual reminder that Treasure Island is San Francisco!

This is how we flow, centers the role of workers who build our communities and keep water flowing in San Francisco homes and businesses. The workers’ portraits are rendered with vibrant pops of color designed to delight Treasure Island residents and visitors alike.

The reference portraits are drawn from the archives of SF Water and they highlight the diversity of the staff and the diversity of labor they perform. As evidenced by the folks on construction sites and inside beautiful pipes, their work is often out of site.

This is how we flow turns this dynamic inside out, giving us all a view of the vital role their work plays in our daily lives.

View a larger image of This is how we flow

Cycles of Water and Light

Ron Saunders

Saunders Treasure Island Mural_Final Layout-02 (1).jpgThis proposal presents a site-specific mural composed of photogram images of natural elements, to be installed on the exterior walls of the Treasure Island Water Recovery Resource Facility. The artwork celebrates the vital role of water and ecology while visually connecting to the building’s function. It is designed to inspire both visitors and staff by transforming the facility into a place of education, beauty, and reflection.

This eight-panel cyanotype mural traces the transformative journey of water—beginning in the atmosphere and ending as clean gray water ready to nourish the landscape. Using natural forms and photogram techniques, each panel serves as a chapter in a visual story that honors both the science of water treatment and the beauty of nature’s design. All imagery in the mural will be created using natural materials—leaves, seeds, flowers, feathers, and other organic materials —collected from the surrounding landscape and local ecosystems. These materials will be used to make photograms, a camera-less photographic technique that captures the shadows and textures of natural forms.

Panel 1- Rain and Fog: Rain and drifting fog introduce the mural, symbolizing San Francisco’s coastal climate and the water’s atmospheric beginning. This panel anchors the mural in place, reminding viewers about the source of all water.

Panel 2- Wetland Filter: This panel features photograms of native California plants, emphasizing the importance of nature in the water cycle. Plants absorb, filter, and rely on water–remind us that natural systems work alongside infrastructure to sustain life.

Panel 3- Flowing Through: Wavy horizontal water lines represent water moving through underground infrastructure as it travels into the treatment system. The lines create a rhythmic movement, pulling the viewer forward to connect to panel 4.

Panel 4- Leaf as Network: A leaf detail symbolizes a natural filtration system and network. The image highlights how water moves through organic and engineered pathways alike, guided by structure.

Panel 5- Nautilus Shell: The spiral chambers of a nautilus shell symbolize the complexity and inner workings of the treatment plant. Spiraling like the shell and swirling as the facility processes the water in careful stages of transformation.

Panel 6- Microbial Life: Delicate dollar seed photograms mimic bacterial forms, immersed in misshapen, organic water shapes. Dollar seeds suggest helpful bacteria at work—cleaning and breaking down waste at a microscopic level. These unseen organisms are vital to renewal.

Panel 7- Light and Purification: Pincushion seeds float like bursts of UV light—representing the final cleansing phase, where water is purified before it reenters the landscape.

Panel 8- Return to Earth: A cyan blue pond, surrounded by native California plants, closes the cycle. Dragonflies and butterflies symbolize balance and renewal. The water is now clean, ready to nourish life again.

The mural will be fabricated using porcelain enamel on 12-inch square porcelain ceramic substrates, ensuring long-term durability and vibrant color. Rendered entirely in cyanotype blue, the artwork reinforces the theme of transformation through water. The unique visual quality of the photogram process draws the viewer in, inviting reflection and a closer connection to the often-invisible systems that sustain our environment.

View a larger image of Cycles of Water and Light

Bay Flow

Alyson Shotz

AS_TI 30 x 40 board dpi 175 (2).jpgMy proposal for the Treasure Island Water Resource Recovery Facility is to create a series of eight porcelain tile murals depicting the flow of water as it passes around various geometric forms. This project represents a long-standing interest close to my work – the flow of water in its multiple states. With this proposal, I am recognizing the importance of flow and flow equalization which controls the passage of water through each stage of the treatment system, allowing time for the physical and chemical processes to take place.

These eight murals are comprised of porcelain exterior tiles, printed and glazed in Italy, with inserts of matte black and silver reflective glazed and cracked tiles in geometric shapes: circles, rectangles and squares.  These inserts obliquely reference sediment like sticks, leaves, plastics, and other debris that will get sifted out at the TIWRFF. The black color also references the activated carbon used to remove pathogens from the effluent.  

The designs that I’ve created for TIWRFF are based on experiments in fluid dynamics done in the 1970’s at the University of Bristol, and evolved out of my artistic research into the phenomenon of flow, waves and water. Dating back to my undergraduate coursework in Physics and Geology, I have been engaged in a decades-long artistic exploration of movement in nature, not just regarding the flow of water, but also the effect of gravity and topology at the most elemental level. This interest in ocean dynamics, water waves and fluid motion also informed my research as an artist-in-residence at Stanford University several years ago.

My intent for this series of murals is to create a kind of narrative of flow as the viewer moves left to right. The surface will be glazed in deep blues and greens relating to the bay around it. Visible from many vantage points and stretching across the Facility, the softly reflective glazed surface will shift subtly with the changing light through the day. 

View a larger image of Bay Flow

Peaks and Creeks

David Wilson

02_David Wilson_Art Proposal for Treasure Island Water Resource Recovery Facility_presentation board_HORIZONTAL FORMAT (1).jpg

“Peaks and Creeks,” a site-specific artwork hand painted on ceramic tile, offers a
multi-vantaged, unifying view of the Bay Area, seen from the top of six distinct peaks that
surround and center Treasure Island, and through the creeks that define these various
watersheds as they converge into the bay.


Starting in the West and moving clockwise around the Bay, I will create 6 large scale
paintings from the top of Twin Peaks (west), Tamalpais Peak (north west), Wildcat Peak (north
east), Grizzly Peak (east), Redwood Peak (south east), and San Bruno Peak (south west). Each
of these panoramic landscape paintings creates a rotating sightline directly back to the central
Treasure Island WRRF site. To more deeply explore the connection between these points and
Treasure Island as a center of the Bay Area, I will walk the length of the various creeks that
anchor each peak’s watershed flowing to the bay and make a series of paintings following the
creeks’ movement. This embodied painting process explores how the landscape connects not
only visually across space but also in the convergence of water.


I will use these paintings to create the final artwork for the TI WRRF, painting with a
colorful palette of glazes directly onto ceramic tiles at scale, working in a hands-on collaboration
with the Clé Tile studio in Richmond, CA, using their custom made artisan brick tiles in gloss
white. Each tiled wall section of the building will feature a ‘Peak and Creek’ episode, with a large
panoramic peak-view across the top of the wall, and details of the corresponding creek as it
flows into the Bay along the bottom. This sequence of glazed tile paintings will move across the
building and connect viewers outward from the island to the larger constellation of Bay Area
watersheds. Above the worker’s entrance on the backside of the building will be a large glazed
tile painting of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir as an homage to the source for San Francisco’s
water system. One panel of the building will feature a map of the overall project, and another
panel will feature a diagram of how the TI WRRF functions to ‘Protect the Bay’ by cleansing its
waters.


The idea of seeing and being seen resonates with my goal of making an artwork that
celebrates the growing community on Treasure Island as a vibrant and distinct center of the Bay
Area, and reflects on how this community is supported by the new TI WRRF as part of a larger
water system

View a larger image of Peaks and Creeks

Opportunity For Public Comment

Please take a few minutes to review these artwork proposals and provide feedback. The proposals are available online at www.sfartscommission.org/calendar/proposal-displays, or accessed by the QR Code below, where you can leave feedback in the public comment form. Comments may also be submitted via email to sfacpublicartcomment@sfgov.org by Wednesday, June 18 at 5:00 p.m. PST.

Public comments will be considered by the Review Panel as part of the Final Review Panel meeting where the Panel will recommend one proposal for implementation. Please note that public comments do not constitute a vote.

The Final Review Panel meeting will take place remotely during the last week of June 2025. All Artist Review Panel meetings are open to the public. An agenda for the meeting will be posted 72 hours in advance of the meeting on SFAC’s website under the Public Meeting section: www.sfartscommission.org

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Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Crafts Examiners

May 06
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10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
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January 07
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December 18
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