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🌾 The Secret Lives of Wichita’s Public Art

🌾 The Secret Lives of Wichita’s Public Art

Do you notice the art around town?

Landon Huslig
July 23, 2025

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning, Wichita!

The last two deep dives have focused on sports (TBT and NBC).

Today, we want to focus on something else - ART.

Let's get to it!

- Landon Huslig

p.s. HOW ABOUT THEM AFTERSHOCKS?! SEE YOU SUNDAY!

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Public Art in Wichita

Wichita has a pretty extensive and often underrated art scene.

Murals, sculptures, pillars, bridges, mosaics, light fixtures, and more are tucked all over the city, turning ordinary spaces into places that make you pause, smile, or wonder.

I often find myself driving past a piece of public art and thinking, How long has that been there? Who made it? And what does it mean?

Lucky for us, there’s a tool that can answer all of that and more: the Public Art Archive.

This online resource catalogs Wichita’s growing public art collection with photos, artist info, year installed, and sometimes even the story behind the piece. It’s a rabbit hole worth falling into and a reminder of just how much creativity lives on our city’s streets.

Many of the pieces listed deserve their own deep dives, and I may do just that in the future. But today, I want to highlight the Public Art Archive itself and share a few of my favorite or most interesting finds.

One last note: the archive is still growing. If you know of a public artwork around Wichita that’s missing or details about artwork that is already detailed, the City wants to hear from you. Helping fill in the blanks only makes this resource better for all of us.

Wichita Water Works

Kicking it off with maybe the most polarizing, and one of the more expensive, recent pieces to come to Wichita. These three are around the new water treatment plant over by the Sedgwick County Zoo.

Source

Source was built in 2024 and was funded by the Percent for Art public ordnance that pools 2% of public project funds for the creation and maintenance of public art to help keep Wichita a unique place.

This sculpture is 37ft tall and is shaped to represent “balance and harmony of two source systems that supply water to the Wichita Water Works”.

Water is Life

This colorful raindrop is also by the water treatment plant and shows beautiful native plants and animals via cutouts with lights shining through.

Cloud Field

This field of clouds was built in 2024 near Wichita Water Works along the new bike path to dive into the identity, community, and convergence of diverse cultures in Wichita.

Solar Calendar

This is one of the most unique and dare I say random pieces of art in Wichita.

You can find this Solar Calendar (built in 2014 by Steve Murillo) at Central Riverside Park.

These stones stand to create a technologically accurate astronomical observatory. Each stone tracks the sun’s location and aligns at sunset, sunrise and local noon on the first day of each of the four seasons.

Chester I Lewis Reflection Square Park

Ellamonique Baccus and Matthew Mazzotta created the Chester I Lewis Reflection Square Park in 2023 in the heart of downtown.

It serves as a public gathering place and living testament to the life and work of civil rights attorney Chester I Lewis (1929 - 1990).

This part dives into the history and contains multiple structures including two 13-foot painted aluminum wings.

Avian Migration

I had seen this one in the past, but didn’t realize how cool it actually was.

Avion Migrations was created by Lisa Rudnerstrom, Tom McGuire, and John Harrison in 2018 for the Advanced Learning Library.

At first, you might notice a bunch of flying paper airplane-esque shapes fling through the sky.

But did you know that each of these 150 avian forms carries “an individually-controlled LED light, capable of flashing in various colors and at programmed times to animate the flights of the work’s title.” (shoutout to The Shout for the deep dive

With each of these “birds” is interactive, there are 8 motion sensors placed around the library that activate different sets of the pieces so they are always moving in a unique way.

Did you know that? I sure didn’t.

Hawk

In 2000, this Hawk created by Georgia Gerber was gifted to the City of Wichita and sits near 400 E Douglas at the 100 Block of Topeka St.

Now you have a fun fact to annoy tell your significant other whenever you drive by it (tell them every time you drive by as if it’s the first time, they’ll love it).