SEA CHANGE
Sea Change is a letterpress printed artist book and companion print series that uses catastrophe modeling to map the projected impact of sea level rise on the Florida Peninsula if action is not taken to combat climate change. In this book, state and regional maps of the Florida Peninsula repeat page by page with hand-cut paper corrections that reflect projections for coastal impacts for up to ten feet in sea level rise. The corresponding text on the verso of each repeating image of the Florida Peninsula rises on the page in tandem with index tabs that visually mark predictions in two foot increments. Each map correction is letterpress printed, hand-cut, and pasted on the page directly over the previous correction. As projections increase, the layers of corrections overlap and fill the page, physically marking an evolving landscape with permanent adhesion.
The system of mapping used in this book was inspired by research and study of the print holdings of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Florida in the Map & Imagery Library, most notably Miami, vol. 1, 1921 containing a record of 28 paper corrections dating from 1928 - 1950. Originally created to allow fire insurance companies to assess risk and liability to urbanized areas within the United States, these maps were published in volumes that were bound and corrected by “pasters” who were employed to cut and glue over outdated maps until a new volume was produced.
Sea Change is bound using Benjamin Elbel’s Onion Skin Binding technique. The spine of each page is glued and layered to the previous page and trimmed on a guillotine so that the cross-section cut resembles an onion, or in this case, a topographical map or the ripples of moving water. The book is housed in a partial slipcase with a printed image of the present day Florida Peninsula on front. When the book is removed from the slipcase, a remnant image of the Florida Peninsula as it would appear under ten feet of sea level rise is revealed.
The companion print series to the artist book, titled, “Sea Change: Catastrophe Map Building Set” presents an alternate way of experiencing the project. In this set, three letterpress printed base maps are included with un-cut maps for each layer of corrections. Instructions are included for how to cut and paste each layer by hand with the idea in mind that physically doing the labor to correct the maps with each new prediction will foster a deeper understanding of what is at stake in Florida if action is not taken to combat climate change. However, sea level rise projections can also be viewed without cutting and pasting for those who wish to keep the set intact. Each base map can simply be placed on a light box and the layers added one at a time to reveal the changes.
The source material for the map images in this book were drawn from worst case scenario predictions from the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer (https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/). The text is written from research collated from several key sources including most notably the Fourth National Climate Assessment (https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/) and the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/).
Sea Change was letterpress printed from photopolymer plates by Boxcar Press on an SP-15 Vandercook Proof Press in the UF School of Art + Art History Type Shop on Somerset Velvet and Masa papers. The map layers were cut by hand and attached with wheat paste in the Sanborn “pasters” tradition.
ARTIST BOOK
9.5 x 1.25 x 12.5 inches (closed)
Variable Edition of 25
$1750
CATASTROPHE MAP building SET
9.5 x .25 x 12.5 (closed)
Edition of 15
(Only available as part of the complete set)
COMPLETE SET (Artist Book & Catastrophe Map building Set)
$2000
Sea Change is the 2019 artist’s book edition from the Marjorie S. Coffey Library Endowment Residency at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida.
Designed and printed by Anne Covell during a semester long residency in the fall of 2019.
in the news
Sea Change is a 2020 semi-finalist for the MCBA Prize. Read more here.
Sea Change is featured in Reclamation: Artists' Books on the Environment, a juried exhibition of artists' books exploring our relationship to the environment at this moment on the planet. Jurors: Betty Bright (Independent Curator and Historian specializing in book art), Mark Dimunation (Chief of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress), and Ruth Rogers (Curator of Special Collections at Wellesley College).
Learn about the Coffey Residency for Book Arts at the University of Florida here.
COLLECTIONS
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Penn State University*
Ringling College of Art + Design*
RISD*
Rollins College*
Tufts University*
UC Berkeley*
University of Central Florida*
University of Florida
University of Miami*
University of Northern Texas*
Virginia Commonwealth University*
Wellesley College
Yale University*
(indicates complete set holdings*)