“1937 Flood,” says the 8-foot-tall monolith sitting in front of the Evansville Levee Authority on South Fulton Avenue near Ohio Street. For seven years, the eye-catching artwork has doubled as somber reminder of the region’s most devastating natural disaster.
“I drive by … every chance I get,” says University of Southern Indiana art professor Joan Kempf deJong, who with late professor John McNaughton used a historic photo to design the 6-foot-wide sculpture. Evansville Sheet Metal Works cut their digital design from half-inch thick aluminum to form the 300-pound artwork, which features a mark indicating the catastrophe’s high-level mark of 53.7 feet — 19 feet above flood stage.
“We wanted to capture the beautiful graphic quality of the flowing floodwater,” the pair said in their 2016 proposal for the sculpture. Therefore, the waves are cut out, so visitors can look through from either side to envision what the area might have looked like surrounded by the Ohio River overflow.
