Fouling Communities
Fouling Communities is a visual study of the marine invertebrates populating Buttermilk Channel and broader New York Harbor, conducted in residency with the Works on Water Collective on Governors Island, May-Aug 2021.
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Based on research by students at the Harbor School, this work explores the building patterns of soft bodies through mixed media on paper, canvas, and mylar.
The animals included are sometimes referred to by science as being members of “fouling communities” because of the way they “colonize” man-made structures in bodies of water like piling, ship hulls, and marinas.
These paintings examine soft tissue communities expanding and iterating themselves.
Photo documentation by Matthew Sherman.
