Sand Bag Muralists Sought To Make Flood Barriers Less Ugly

SOUTH STREET SEAPORT, NY — An open call for artists: the city is seeking artists to design murals to make a stretch of giant sand bags prettier along South Street Seaport.

The giant sand bags have been in the works in recent months to protect a stretch of South Street Seaport from coastal flooding.

The designs would be installed on vinyl banners along the barriers, which are four-foot tall barriers filled with sand installed by New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM).

Artists' who win will receive $1,000, according to Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer's office, a partner with NYCEM on the call for artists.

The barriers are a part of a larger project in the neighborhood called the Interim Flood Protection Measures program.

The barriers, called HESCO barriers, are aimed to reduce low-level coastal flood risks, not risks from massive storms like Superstorm Sandy in 2012, according to a recent NYCEM presentation. The barriers will be posted up along with Tiger Dams, which are orange tubes that are deployed in the days before a storm to protect from coastal flooding.

The project is a part of a much more sweeping resiliency plan to protect the neighborhood — a $10 billion plan floated by the de Blasio administration earlier this year to extend Manhattan two blocks into the East River in the Financial District. That idea currently has no funding. Further north are flood protection designs in Two Bridges and the East River Park through Stuyvesant Town.

The deadline for the call for muralists in July 15.

Winning artists' designs would run from Old Slip to Catherine Slip along the Seaport up to Two Bridges, according to the NYCEM presentation.

Non-professional artists are welcome to apply.

For more information, see here.