Charts needed for awareness campaign

Artist Jane Lawton Baldridge shares her latest project and how she needs help from the boating community:

I have had a fascination, maybe an obsession, with water for as long as I remember. Watching my childhood sandcastles fall to the continued impertinent rolling in of waves and tide captivated me.

This proved to be a miniature version of what happens all around the globe as now, much of the coastal areas of the planet have reason to watch their own erosion, subsidence, and the rising tides reshape their world.

I believe that those people who do not go out on the ocean and witness its power and beauty may not understand what happens with the rushing water borne on a storm. Currents, tides, and runoff change the land, scouring some here, depositing some there.

It can be beautiful or terrifying, however, as powerful as the ocean is, it cannot defend itself from man-made pollution and problems.

Originally, my work has been two-dimensional paintings on canvas meant to inspire awareness to the beauty and preciousness of our oceans and rivers. But recently, my passion for water has taken me to a three-dimensional expression of my stories, “Ocean Phenomena.”

To illustrate sea level rise, I re-purpose mannequins by covering them in recycled navigational charts, and then I paint the water rising up their bodies for the purpose of having traveling exhibitions, partnering with environmental organizations to bring attention to the precariousness of coastal life.

By 2030, a great deal of South Florida and the Keys will be inundated permanently if we do not stop or slow down the advance of the sea. Our time is now to create awareness and change, but I need your help.

To share my love of the water, its beauty, my preoccupation with its power, and its need for protection, I need old navigation charts and chart books. If you have these items to let go, I would pay shipping for the donation. Contact me at gosail@bellsouth.net.