overflow (2023)
AMANDA THACKRAY + WENDELL JEFFREY

Overflow (2023) by collaborating artists Amanda Thackray and Wendell Jeffrey centers on climate change, storm frequency and severity, coastal flooding, and opportunities for climate resilience. It is located at 57 Treat Place in Newark, NJ. This is the artist's first large-scale mural, created in partnership with Four Corners Public Arts, stakeholder WM.S Rich & Sons, and a recipient of the 2021 New Jersey State Council of the Arts Coastal Risk Communication Campaign Grant.  

In recent years, flooding has expanded and our community is being forced to adapt to a new reality. Floods are both constant and at the same time ephemeral, leaving a trail of destruction once receded. The mural illustrates Hurricane Sandy's impact on the City of Newark, as it suffered from historic flooding. The flood data is rendered using patterning of Suminagashi marbling, an environmentally-friendly Japanese paper marbling technique that creates abstract patterns that mirror the movement of the water and parallel patterns of topographic mapping. In preparation for Overflow, the artists hosted two community workshops in Branch Brook Park during the summer of 2022 that educated residents and introduced the marbling process.

The completed mural allows the viewer to enter a dialogue with it by pinpointing their location (red dot on the map) in relation to the flood water data in the surrounding neighborhoods. A map also expands to show Newark’s relationship to the water that defines its eastern border - the Passaic River and Newark Bay, delineating the city’s relationship to the coastal waters along the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean. A mounted map key, located in the lower right corner, identifies each layer of the map. A QR code included in the map key links to a range of relevant websites and information about other climate resilience projects. This information will allow the community to interact and take an active role in the project.

Overflow emphasizes the importance of preparation and raises awareness about the potential dangers that flooding can bring. By engaging passersby, and offering data and resources it aims to foster a sense of environmental consciousness and inspire individuals to take action, enabling our community to persevere through increasing climate crises.

About Amanda Thackray:
Amanda Thackray is a multidisciplinary ecofeminist artist and educator, based in Newark, NJ, whose practice sits at the intersection of craft, sculpture, and environmentally-based social practice. Thackray’s projects have been exhibited at The Newark Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Montclair Art Museum, The NARS Foundation, and The Knockdown Center, among numerous other galleries and museums. 

Thackray is the recipient of a Newark Creative Catalyst Fund Artist Fellowship in 2020 and 2021, a Puffin Foundation Grant for Environmental Art in 2021, a Newark Artist Accelerator grant in 2021, and a NJ State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 2022. She has been awarded numerous residencies including The Arctic Circle in Svalbard, Norway, a year-long Scholarship for Advanced Study in Book Arts at The Center for Book Arts in NYC, and artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design in NYC. Her work is in over a dozen public collections including The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Mediatheque Andre Malraux, France, Yale University, and The Library of Congress. She teaches printmaking, artist’s books, and papermaking at SUNY Purchase and Rutgers University. Thackray earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She is currently building a boat.

About Wendell Jeffrey:
Wendell Jeffrey has an MAT in Art Ed from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Having taught art in public school for 28 years, Jeffrey’s interests involve hands-on, student-driven projects connecting the community through shared experiences. Jeffrey’s studio practice has been guided by historical, situational, and environmental issues. Working with a wide range of materials—from paper and wood to cement, wax, and clay to discarded debris, Jeffrey investigates unconscious chance caused by human actions. Whether it is about relationships between neighbors, the ethics of owning land, a pandemic, or taking cues from an 1845 shipwreck. The work is meant to provoke wonder and compel viewers to think critically about the value of responsibility or accountability for these actions.

Wendell has received a 2022 Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as well as grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and completed numerous residencies, including the Golden Foundation, Guttenberg Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Solo shows include Frontline Arts, NJ Guttenberg Arts, NJ, and the Monmouth Museum, NJ. When not in the studio or classroom, Jeffrey collects trees.

About the New Jersey State Council of the Arts Coastal Risk Communication Campaign Grant:
The Grant Program, along with the other components of the risk communications campaign, addresses the need to involve and inform the public about the coastal hazards impacts they will face and what actions they can take to reduce their risk. To accomplish this, community-based organizations around the coastal zone are selected through a Notice of Funding Availability and are partnered with artists selected through a Call for Artists. The community-based organizations and artists work together to address the theme of climate resilience and coastal flooding through original, site-specific artwork and community engagement and events.

This program partners the New Jersey Coastal Management Program (CMP) with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (Arts Council) and is made possible in part with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA)’s Enhancement Program Projects of Special Merit (PSM) program.

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