It has the power to both nurture and destroy, awe and inspire, and damage beyond belief. Necessary for life, civilization sprung up around sources of water throughout the world. Agriculturally important for the minerals it contained, land around the Nile river in Egypt was left vacant during the rainy season to account for the annual flooding that deposited nutrients into the fertile soil. As a result, the Egyptians were able to grow many crops that otherwise may not have survived. Flooding was acknowledged as a part of nature, a year running its course, and mankind responded accordingly. Today, flood walls are built higher and higher as more damaging storms occur. Rivers are dammed to make way for more developing downstream, depleting the soil that would have once received the same benefits as the area around the Nile. Homes, businesses and schools are built in known flood zones that continue to expand each year. How did we become so intolerant of natures' natural course?
In my prints, I choose to explore the beauty of floods. Humans have wrestled to control the natural world for hundreds of years, from clearing forests to make room for homogenous fields of genetically modified foods to pumping our livestock full of antibiotics and other drugs to subdue disease, fatten faster and keep them sedated. The oceans are rising, soil and water are both heavily polluted, and species are dying off faster than they can be discovered. Immense forests have been cleared, and even the average temperature of the atmosphere is climbing steadily. It seems that the only place that humans have not been able to directly affect is natural disasters. Of course we have the technology and the instruments to predict these disasters, build up our flood walls and board up our windows, but in the grand scheme of things, we are completely helpless. Volcanoes, avalanches, tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes; nothing can be done to stop them, slow them down or otherwise control them. The power of nature, in her ability to completely and totally render mankind helpless, is what stands out to me in the sea of destruction that is created.
