These four drawings are for Nancy Holt’s System Work titled Waterwork, made for the campus of Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., a university for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Responding to the topography of the site, the sculpture reveals the infrastructure that carries water through the urban environment. Consistently, Holt was interested in the infrastructure that flows through architecture, be it water, heat, light, or air.

Holt was interested in revealing how these flows, which shape everyday life, are “part of a huge network of interconnected conduit systems often deep within the ground or in the walls of buildings. Natural elements flow through these systems, and I build a work that continues the flow and makes it visible and more conscious. In the case of Waterwork, the water that flows through the system goes out into a drainage system and eventually into the ocean.”