(light music) - Artists often see things that other people don't see yet because they just look more deeply at the natural environment or whatever environment they happen to be immersed in.

(light music) I've been here 25 years.

It is a potentially threatening environment here.

It's a very dynamic environment where things can change quickly because of natural forces beyond my control.

(light music) This is a painting depicting the ghost forest that's located at the end of Broadway Road here.

I call this the Ghosts of Broadway.

It starts out with large pine trees that are still very much intact, and yet as the road goes lower, you can see certain trees dying back on the edge of the woods because of the saltiness of the soil.

I didn't know what I was seeing when I first moved here.

I just thought, oh, that's pretty, that's very sculptural.

And now I realize more what it's about.

(light music) This is called the ghost forest activity.

They're just aligned in the way that they're falling down because they will have roots that draw toward the fresh water and toward the landmass and shorter roots heading toward the salt water.

It's just too salty for big trees to grow anymore, and that's just it.

Pine trees in the distance, they will be the next front of trees to go.

(light music) It is a viable ecosystem, but it's changing.

Before, I never saw the redheaded woodpeckers, for example.

Now there are so many insects in the dead trees that the redheaded woodpeckers like to come in and hang around here too.

My pond, it started out actually as kind of a depression, a natural drainage area, and I did get a permit and dug it out deeper because I saw the potential for making a little ecosystem there.

I've always loved small aquatic animals like turtles and frogs specifically.

They're just my thing.

This is a hand painted 10 by 12 foot floor cloth.

It depicts a lot of the creatures that live in and near my pond.

And this in particular are four frogs looking together and you can kind of see their faces there.

And here's a couple of tadpoles placed in that design.

(light music) This is a flood zone, so the pond, which started out as a fresh water pond and had many fresh water aquatic animals, and it is now changing over as we've had more frequent salt water overflowing into the pond.

(light music) When I saw a blue crab in my pond, I thought, this is weird.

A blue crab is a salt water animal.

How can they be living in my freshwater pond?

And I realized then the salinity of the pond must be up pretty high.

We had about a foot of water, flood water on the property at that time.

This land dwelling turtle couldn't walk fast enough to get out of the flood water.

I found it just floating around and I guess it just didn't know what to do.

I thought that really says something about the plight of these upland animals being overcome by the salty flood waters.

What do they do?

Can they survive?

(light music) During a major storm, it could have as much as two or three feet of water in the yard.

I would like to try to live here as long as possible.

The house has been raised up four feet from its original foundation.

I have my propane tank anchored down so it won't flood away.

And I, the studio too is built out of the predicted flood hazard zone.

I don't want to be foolish.

In the meantime, I consider it sort of adding relevance to my work, that I'm willing to suffer some inconvenience in order to document the changes in the wildlife, document the changes in the landscape, document the challenges that are required for people to live here and maybe be able to pass on some advice for those who are interested about how not to panic, but to live more sensibly and more in harmony with nature.

We're going to have to adapt if we want to survive.

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