Christina Bertea joined the WEAD Board in 2013 and has served as treasurer, secretary, and currently is on the exhibitions committee. She is a water activist, lecturer, eco artist, and social change agent.
Having worked in glass, stone, and built water features for community gardens and public spaces, she now uses whatever media can best raise consciousness about pressing environmental issues. Found and salvaged materials find new life in her sculptural assemblage work.
An “outsider” to the formal art world, she earned a degree from University of California, Berkley in social psychology. She is also certified in permaculture and in Harner Method Shamanic Counseling. She has taught extensively about soil and water, including greywater/rainwater installation workshops through Greywater Action. A union-trained plumbing contractor, she has installed rain and greywater systems throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, but mostly she loves to putz in the garden, graft, forage, dream, drum, listen to water sing, and find refuge in the woods.
Some highlights of her environmental and art work include:
- 1974: Tested affirmative action and was the first woman apprentice admitted to a plumbing union in California
- 1990: Designed and built a passive solar rammed-earth cottage in Downtown Oakland, demonstrating the feasibility of alternative materials for inner city infill
- 2008: Produced Mineral Springs and Water Temples of the Bay Area, a photo exhibit in collaboration with Betsy Damon’s Sacred Springs of Tibet and China at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California
- 2010: Co-produced Water Works: A Festival of Wise Water Use with Lauren Elder, creating such delights as “Rain Tree” and a “Bucketin’ Bronco” play pump
- 2020: Initiated WEAD’s first online Art+ Activism programming with a Zoom presentation of The Art of Playing with the Rain
- 2025: Intensively studied water cycle restoration with Zach Weiss and the Water Stories community
- 2026: Toured revived rivers and villages in Rajasthan, India, with Zach Weiss and Rajendra Singh
- 2026: Continued involvement with Rehydrate California culture shapers
Her work has been covered and featured in many publications, most recently:
- Soils Turn, edited by Alexandra R. Toland and Patricia L. Watts, ecoartspace (2025)
- Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss by Samuel Pelts, The Codex Foundation (2020)
- Creating Raingardens by Cleo Woelfle-Erskine and Apryl Uncapher, Timber Press (2012)
- Urban Homesteading by Rachel Kaplan, K. Ruby Blume, Skyhorse Publishing (2011)
- Serious Fun: Ingenious Improvisations on Money, Food, Waste, Water & Home by Carolyn North, Findhorn Press (2011)