Jersey City artist tussles with wrathful, ravaging forces tied to the climate crisis

Patches of blue and off-white are covered in part by a wide, prominent reach of green thread along other stretches of more entangled thread. Called “Hackensack Net,” the work is part of artist Nancy Cohen’s vision.

She is one of many artists along the East Coast tackling the climate crisis as part of their creative inspiration. Their works define some of the ways people are emotionally and intellectually processing a daunting human event.

Cohen has spent most of her life on the periphery of water in her home state of New York — the East River in her native Queens, the Long Island Sound where she grew up, the Atlantic Ocean near her grandparents’ home and for over 30 years now, the Hudson River in her adopted home of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Those times have inspired her work over the past 40 years, particularly in the last 15 where she has created many large-scale paper-on-paper drawings and sculptures showing her interpretation of how water is shaped by forces beyond nature.

"Some aspects of water have been sort of intuitively in my work for a long time, but I think when I moved to New Jersey, to Jersey City in particular, I became really conscious of the relationship between rivers, industrial development, pollution, climate change, all of that," Cohen said.

Learning more about climate change made a major impact on her art.

She recalled kayaking through a mangrove swamp in Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. To the casual observer these mangroves growing in salty water stand out with tangled roots that make them look like they are on stilts above the water.

Cohen is now working on two drawings influenced by memories of those mangroves.

“To see roots or basically trees growing out of the water is kind of amazing. The root structures are incredibly beautiful and connected and sculptural. While kayaking, you can see this terrible sight of garbage and plastics caught in these loopy roots in the water.”

Research has found that mangroves are effective barriers against the effects of climate change due to their ability to capture and store carbon and protect the coastlines from erosion and storm damage.

Some mangrove forests in Florida are being eradicated by hurricanes and drought, byproducts of climate change. Storms have damaged mangroves in some parts of the state, especially by surge, but in other places they’re expanding northward.

What's caught in the net

A visit to Cohen's Jersey City studio is an opportunity to see her large-scale installations on display; abstract depictions of waterways that are suffering ravages of climate change.

“Hackensack Net” is there, capturing her visits that began over a decade ago to a site left abandoned along the Hackensack River. She thinks there might have been a restaurant and golf shooting range, but the only clues left behind are shredded nets and boats destroyed by a storm.

"The first time I went back to this site after Hurricane Sandy, there was a boat literally inside a house. The flooding from Sandy had picked this boat up all the way from the water the equivalent of a block and got through the house."

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Sitting in another corner of the studio is a model for an upcoming project called “Once She Dries,” an opera created by fellow Jersey City resident and artist Meagan Woods. The opera tells a love story involving a coral reef, a rain cloud and the ancient Roman structure, the Pantheon.

Woods said the opera is based on the scientific phenomenon of coral reefs emitting a chemical that attracts water vapor to create a rain cloud that helps with cooling if the waters around them become too warm or acidic due to climate change. Dimethyl sulfide is produced by algae living in coral tissues, which then turns into an aerosol of tiny particles that seed clouds leading to precipitation.

Coral reefs can substantially reduce coastal flooding and erosion by dissipating as much as 97% of the energy behind waves making landfall.

Cohen's art will be featured in the production and debut next year.

“I was struck not only by the themes of water but how embodied her work feels," Woods said of her collaboration with Cohen. "And knowing her process now, I know how much manipulation there is of the materials she uses and how corporal it is. There is also something about the compositions and the structures, and the color traces that just appeal to me on a visceral level.”

Cohen said working on this new effort with Woods and her other art has further shaped how she views climate change.

"I guess for me, there's two sides," Cohen said. "One is you really cannot make a dent in a certain way, but that if you can make something that engages people enough to think and spend time, then you can sometimes change people or open people's understanding."

Cohen’s art is fragile as a material object but powerful and durable as a tool of engagement. The two hope that the impact of their collaboration will outlast any given night’s performance.

— This article is part of a USA TODAY Network reporting project called "Perilous Course," a collaborative examination of how people up and down the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis. Journalists from more than 35 newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida are speaking with regular people about real-life impacts, digging into the science and investigating government response, or lack of it.

— Reporter Monique Calello contributed to this article.

Ricardo Kaulessar is a culture reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Atlantic Region How We Live team. For unlimited access to the most important news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com

Twitter: @ricardokaul

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Climate change effects interpreted by New Jersey artist