Much of Akima Brackeen’s research is about exploring people’s relationship to water and bodies of water at different scales, so when she visited Columbus for the first time during the 2019 Exhibit Columbus Exhibition, she found Mill Race Park to be an inspiration. 

“Water in all of its fluidity and movement happens at that park,” she said. “You have flowing water, you have areas of stillness, a human-made circular lake, a naturally formed lake, and a junction where the rivers collide.”  

For this cycle of Exhibit Columbus, Brackeen partnered with the Bartholomew County Public Library to create an installation on the library's plaza and imagine how to experience water closer to the downtown area. The final design, a shallow pool at the entrance to the library encourages people to walk through, sit by and splash in.  

“Water has many meanings to different people,” she said. “I like to think about all the ways that people engage with it, understand how its presence and absence shape us, and reimagine spaces with water in mind.”

She hopes young people, especially, will resonate with the installation that she designed. To that end, Brackeen collaborated with Dakota Hall, the Teen Programming Librarian, on a Teen Workshop, where they developed a series of activities that involved creating water features that included sound and water at the library.  

The team carefully selected the pool’s location and color to help set the tone for “Pool/Side.” Placing it right at the entrance changes how people arrive and move toward the building and it becomes part of the journey. 

Brackeen chose a bright purple for the pool, a color she connects with vibrant energy and iconic musicians such as Prince and Jimi Hendrix. It also brought back pleasant memories from her childhood and coincidentally happens to be Hall’s favorite color.

Brackeen said that in designing the pool she wanted to recall a past when not everyone was welcome at public swimming sites, while celebrating that we are reclaiming those spaces so that everyone is included. 

While she designed the pool with some activities in mind, she’s excited to see how people make it their own—perhaps as a stage, performance space, dance floor, jam session, reading circle, yoga practice or something else. There are no walls or roofs intentionally. The openness allows visitors to experience the plaza and the library in a new and somewhat unexpected way.  

In this case, Yes And is about adding a new experience to the library and the plaza and people finding new ways to use what is already in place, but Brackeen said it is about learning about community desires, using those insights to help inform the design, and building upon ongoing research about pools and public spaces. 

Immediately after the opening of Exhibit Columbus, Brackeen will leave for Rome. As a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize, presented by the American Academy in Rome, she will continue her research on people’s relationships with water there.