This past year a new theme emerged for the Tide and Current Taxi.

Rather than concentrating on where the tide takes us when it moves,

the trips can be about what the tide shows us when we stay in place,

things it covers or reveals.

Robert Sullivan came up with the idea in relation to my project on Oyster Island last February.

He pointed out that European settlers first called all the small islands in the Jersey Flats ‘Oyster Island’, understanding that as their original Lenape name.

He suggested that Oyster Island’s unique ability to disappear during low tide might have protected something closer to its indigenous name, rather than being recast as a Liberty, Ellis, or Governors Island.

I started thinking about one of the city’s most famously named islands, a name so reclusive it seems to drop right off the map.

In ‘Other Islands of New York City’ Sharon Seitz writes that the Nonation Islands were not claimed by any nation because who would want them? They were really just rocky impediments,

but maybe the islands were hiding out the day that ownership was assigned.

In the 1650’s, when the Dutch were snapping up property in the area (and naming it) they would have known about high and low tide, but they didn’t understand its relation to the moon, or been able to predict the mixed semidiurnal behavior of the tide. The tide here isn’t just high or low, there are four different turning points – two highs and two lows that can vary a few feet between their apogees.

Maybe the Dutch came out during the wrong low tide and said that there was nothing there.

It’s not too different from our experience that morning.

Robert wanted to visit the Bronx Islands for an upcoming article in New York Magazine.

He thought about these tidal appearances and disappearances as a way to experience the future, to see parts of New York City the way that climate change will see them.

We didn’t find Nonation Island.

 It escaped us like it had escaped the namers and owners of islands for decades,

hiding beyond time, demonstrating that it would eventually be lost forever,

 but jeff found his flotsam object,

 and we got to talk to Robert Sullivan for hours.

This summer the Tide and Current Taxi participates in the Commuter Biennial, a show about public space in Miami.

My first trip was with Leandra Lopez and Matt Ray.

We were assisted by the tide a little, but mostly propelled by this electric motor.

 

There was something different to watch for in the tide, that I don’t notice in New York City.

As the tide turned around it seemed to be attracting all kinds of life to the mouth of the Little River,

like this giant swimming lizard.

In fact most of my notable experience so far in Miami have revolved around giant living things.

Check back on this page throughout the week for more updates!

For a show this spring at Bennington College’s Usdan Gallery, I explored the area watershed with a group of students, starting at the little pond on the campus.

We looked at how the pond connected to the Paran Creek, the Walloomsac River, the Hoosic River, and eventually the Hudson River.

We walked along the banks collecting junk, making drawings, and reading. 

In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau writes, “these ‘traverses’ remain heterogeneous to the system they infiltrate and in which they sketch out the guileful ruses of different interests and desires. They circulate, come, go, overflow and drift over an imposed terrain, like the snowy waves of the sea slipping in among the rocks and defiles of an established order…”

I think that De Certeau was talking about language, but we tried anyhow, to drift over our imposed terrain like that.

When the show came down, I paddled the rest of the way to New York City with Anne Thompson. We started in Stillwater, where the Hoosic River meets the Hudson.

The river here is part of the New York State Canal System, but the locks were closed due to unusually high water.

It meant we had to portage around the locks. Here the lock operator at Champlain #3 helps transport our bags.

With the locks closed, we had whole stretches of river to ourselves without another boat for days.

When I told friends in New York that Anne Thompson, the curator of the Usdan Gallery was coming with me for a week to paddle down the Hudson River they said, “Really? The CURATOR?” but my show there was actually built around doing a trip like this, and my explorations with students helped me plan the route.

Anne is interested in art that moves beyond the gallery walls, art in the expanded field …

also we are friends from grad school.

Anyway these trips are not just about paddling and eating gorp (for me).

We had some research  days,

and fashion shoots,

some help from friends (that’s Sigrid Lauren, Anne Thompson, Craig Monteith, Monica Mirabile, and me)

and we had truck assisted portages.

In Ossining we traded boats,

and met Letha Wilson who paddled with us the rest of the way to New York City.

Here the tide in the Hudson becomes a major factor, and the current ran against us half the time.

The interesting part about waiting for the tide, is that you sort of have to stop wherever you are.

We spent hours exploring,

in some of the most unlikely places,

just like those unruly sentences in De Certeau’s book.

We camped out in a public park,

and watched the sun rise on the Palisades.

“It’s all worth it for this moment.” I said,

but already I could feel the moment turning against us,

a million tons of water pulled by the moon back to Ossining and Stillwater.

Around Inwood we picked up another passenger, Nicholas Weist.

He paddled with us down the Harlem River,

the East River,

and the Newtown Creek.

The tide was so strong at times that it felt like riding on the back of a gigantic animal.

When we got out on land, my body felt strange like the cement and everything else was moving.

That night Letha described going under the piers and bridges of New York as a strange encounter with a familiar space, 

“Like an X-ray or an endoscope of my own body.”

The other thing we talked about that night, perhaps the most unusual thing that we saw on our trip,

 a seal in the Harlem River.