By Tom Douglas

The Sacred Springs Kite Exhibition that is currently on display in the Austin Central Library focuses on Texas’ thousands of free-flowing springs, their relationship with life, and the threats that they face from both local development and global climate change. All of the objects on display are artworks that have been rendered into flyable kites. Indeed, some of them took to the air during Austin’s annual kite festival back on April 3. The exhibit, which is a cooperative project of Austin Public Library, Wimberley Valley Watershed Association, and kite exhibition impresario Terry Zee Lee, opened on May 6, and it will run through the end of November. Entry to the exhibition is free, as is the first hour of parking in the library’s garage at 710 W. César Chávez St. The library is ideally situated for this exhibit, being located right at the point where Shoal Creek flows into Lady Bird Lake, only a little more than a mile from famed Barton Springs.    

Emerging from the underground parking garage near the end of the Butterfly Bridge and passing through the library’s main entrance, you will quickly encounter the exhibit’s welcome poster, next to the reserve desk. Already, several kites will be in view, suspended overhead as if they were actually flying inside the library’s six-story, open atrium.

As you walk out into the center of the atrium, look up and you will see many of the exhibit’s 50+ kites in midair. They cover a wide range of shapes and sizes, with some as small as 2-3 feet in their largest dimension up to the two whooping crane kites, each of which has a wingspan that is just shy of 12 feet. 

If you ascend the staircase that winds its way up inside the atrium for several stories, you will see a poster describing the overall exhibit, and eight others, each devoted to one particular featured spring. Six of these springs are in the Texas Hill Country (Krause Springs, Jacob’s Well, Barton Springs, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs, Blue Hole) and two are out in West Texas (Comanche Springs, San Solomon Springs).

While you are there, the 200,000 square foot Central Library building itself is also worthy of your attention. Open since 2017, it has earned a Platinum LEED certification for sustainable design.