Channel Bloom

The Fort Point Channel is blooming with plastic flowers.  Sniffy creatures of discarded plastic detergent containers are appearing and disappearing with the rise and fall of the sea and lunar pull.  Bright colors remind of the spring fresh promise long forgotten and collide with the history of a harbor long soiled, but now back to life despite a much darker larger picture.  This display is courtesy of artist Tim Murdoch, whose previous work has explored the linkages/separations between belonging and not, inside and out, and our relationship to nature.

With tide high, this bloomy vanishes as if in night or winter, and reappears when the tide again lowers and as such it seems to be keeping time more than we ever notice with the quiet rising and dropping of the water.  It signifies, but does so on more than one level, as the reminder of waters rising and dropping is also a reminder that Tide agent of our clean undies has in the past left us with frothy waters and fish floating sideways.  That the harbor is now "clean" may be cause to bloom a flower, but the sign of Tide reminds that all is not well.