Featured Artist Jane Baldridge

Artist Jane Baldridge draws awareness to rising sea levels with dramatic painted and papier-mâché repurposed mannequins. Learn more about this series on her website.

 

 

My life has been and continues to be all about water. My mother took me sailing multiple times before I was even a year old. The first time I sailed across the Gulf of Mexico, I was thirteen.

 

 

The places I’ve lived have all been subject to flooding. While growing up in Seabrook, Texas, there was a lot of flooding, even in the 1960s and 70s. They eventually sacrificed my favorite part of town to make a spillway. Wilmington and Southport, North Carolina, where I spent my 30s to mid 50s, flooded with advancing storms and King Tides more and more frequently. If you want to go dancing at certain times of the year, you need flood boots to get to the favorite spots.

 

 

I am now a resident of South Florida, and water is the centric topic daily—flooding, toxic algae, and quality of drinking water.

 

 

I have always painted water. Since 2019, I have been motivated to move away from the comfort of my canvasses and strike outside the box. I’m on a crusade to bring awareness to the multiple issues involving water.

 

 

Oceana Phenomena is a project about sea level rise and water quality. It uses art to reach the public heartstrings in a way that graphs and data do not. We are late to address this problem, and we need to approach it from every angle.

 

 

Public exhibits of this body of work are meant to educate about actual areas at risk and their timelines. My hope is that it brings about changes in addressing and preparing for sea level rise and the resulting socioeconomic impact.

 

 

Oceana Phenomena – Sea Level Rise received public exposure in 2020 through a two-month long exhibit at The Box Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 2021, there was a five-month exhibit at The Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida.

 

 

Annapolis, Maryland will host a Chesapeake/Annapolis relevant group of mannequins in the near future. A group of concerned residents in Key West, Florida are also planning an exhibit. Meanwhile, more and more coastal communities are looking at being represented with their own “families” of mannequins.

 

 

The works are comprised of adult, child, and animal mannequins. Each is papier-mâchéd with recycled navigational charts and painted with the ocean rising up their bodies.

 

 

My plan is to make as many as there are flooded municipalities. I want to get them out into the world and spread awareness of the many water-related problems we face. At some point, I would love to apply to the Whitney Biennial with a group of 25-50 of them.

 

Artist Jane Baldridge invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

 

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