Tidelines
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2024
Mixed media installation, drawing, herbarium specimens, photographic prints, tool assortment
12.3 L x 11 W x 2 D ft (3,8 x 3,4 x 0,6 m)
Residing as the easternmost city in the continental U.S., Eastport, Maine’s coastal lives are in fine attunement with its semidiurnal 25-foot tidal range, influenced by the Bay of Fundy further northeast in Canada, which holds the largest range in the world at 50 feet. As the tide arrives and departs, as the waves crash and settle, the shore remembers the water by neatly gathering materials such as algae, seashells, plastic bits, driftwood, fishing ropes, emptied sea urchin shells, lobster boat debris, etc., and organizing each material into their own individual line running the length of the beach. Sea lavenders, glassworts, and the likes of other vascular plants who spend half their lives submerged underwater also carefully arrange themselves to define the intertidal reaches. Like tree rings, like strata of the earth, or simply a remarkable topographical drawing made twice a day by the meeting of sea and land.
Furthermore, the lines resemble a durational record keeping of the environment’s interactions, creating a way to measure and visualize time. As our planet continues to warm, each line becomes a waterlogged marker, a daily diary of our current changing sea level. While ice continues to melt from distant glaciers, these tidelines continue to rise, imperceptibly through our human-scale references. With inaction, in time, this visible shoreline and further inland where we stand during high tide will belong to the intertidal zone, engulfed by the sub-aquatic world.
Each rolling wave from this remote region in the Gulf of Maine is in correlation with the collapsing mountain glacier in Nepal, is in constant response with the receding ice in Antarctica, is in binding fate with record high heatwaves all across the world, is intertwined with every AI generated response from a simple Google search. Everything is interwoven in our intricate web of relations. But this web is also resilient. Climate change is human change, and if humanity can change to this degree of separation, so can we change back.
“Tidelines” is an observational research workstation which explores the dynamic ecology of Maine’s Downeast Coast region, the rhythm of its tides, the intertidal zone that perpetually covers and reveals. Following daily research and fieldwork in observing this unfamiliar habitat, materials and information were gathered and composed into a workstation for further examination, visual experimentation, weaving narratives through a responsive collage. These studies accumulate over the period of a month, attempting to hypothesize and draw out connections within this complex web of symbiotic relationships. The installation is shared as an active researching space and invites the public to interact with the specimens and share dialogs about the changing environment.
