In 2007 artist Eve S. Mosher used beacons and chalk to mark the projected high water line in Brooklyn and Manhattan. (Battery Park photo by Hose Cedeno courtesy highwaterline.org)
Artist Eve Mosher in 2007 (Photo courtesy highwaterline.org)
“I never wanted this to be a reality,” artist Eve Mosher wrote on her website the week Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey. “Five years ago I couldn’t have even imagined it.”
In 2007 Mosher created High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city’s residents. Using topographic maps, satellite images, research from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, and a Heavy Hitter (a machine typically used to draw chalk lines on ball fields), Moser walked 70 miles of New York coastline, drawing a blue chalk line on the ground ten feet above sea level—the anticipated high water line due to climate change. In other areas, where she was unable to draw a line, she marked the high water boundary with illuminated beacons.
“High Water Line” in the West Village as Eve Mosher drew it in 2007 (Photo courtesy evemosher.com)