Riparian Nexus

This vibrant mural created by artist Thomas Glassford serves as a visual focal point for the central atrium or the U.S. Courthouse in San Antonio.  The artwork’s title, Riparian Nexus, means a “network of waterways.”  Glassford used current and historical maps of San Antonio roads and waterways as his inspiration for the mural’s dynamic pattern of intersecting and overlapping lines.  This courthouse is located adjacent to San Pedro Creek, the source for 45 miles of acequias, or manmade irrigation channels, that supported the establishment of the city.  The building also sits on the Camino Real, or Royal Roadway, an ancient network of Spanish roads that crossed the Rio Grande into Texas from Mexico City.  The mural’s carved surface adds to the sense of a rolling landscape. 

The horizontal symmetry of the mural’s background pattern also references the scales of justice, and so relates to Glassford’s bronze and glass sculptures that are suspended nearby in the atrium and on the exterior of the courthouse.  The mural’s composition also resembles a network of plants or vines, and alludes to the original meaning of a court as an enclosed or walled garden, and a place for important civic gatherings.