Flood Zone Watercolors

Several years ago I stumbled on the fact that an area a few blocks from where I live was once a marshland with a tidal river flowing through it. A small stump of the river remains, but the rest is buried underground. The zoning for the area is mostly industrial, light industrial and commercial. It was the site of two catastrophic fires, in 1908 and 1973, as well as a disastrous flood in 1909. It is now at risk of ever more significant flooding. I became fascinated with the buried river - its former life and the processes by which it was dammed and filled, slowly disappearing over the course of about a hundred and fifty years. And the ways in which its presence makes itself known now. Reeds growing in the middle of heavy industry. Cars stalled out in deep puddles after heavy rains. Leaks and cracks. It's not an unusual story. It's typical of the hardening of estuary zones all along the East Coast. I've recently completed a film about it entitled Island End, the name of the river. No one really knows what Island or End the name refers to... I spent years poring over maps and reading old histories, as well exploring the area on foot, photographing and filming it. I also began to use drawing and watercolor as a way to look and think more slowly. One or two of the images below are views across the stump that remains of the river. The rest depict structures that sit directly on top of the former course of the river. In some of the images I have added fanciful images of shore birds and fish, as though re-populating the area of the covered marsh.  Click here for a few maps - the old river, the current zoning map, and a FEMA flood risk map.