Watermark

Collaborative installation by Kaitlin Pomerantz + Naomieh Jovin, 2025

Watermark is a collaborative installation by Kaitlin Pomerantz and Naomieh Jovin located at the WaterShed, a community climate resilience hub in Germantown, Philadelphia. As founding artists in the WaterShed team as well as Germantown residents, Pomerantz and Jovin worked with community members, Philadelphia Water Department staff, scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences, and curators Ryan Strand Greenberg and Phoebe Bachman to learn about increased local flooding and work towards an awareness-raising tool for the public. After a year of convening, the group designed a vessel for further learning, resource-sharing and community-driven resilience: the WaterShed.

For Watermark, Pomerantz and Jovin interviewed community members impacted by flooding, some featured in Jovin’s illuminated wall portraits (Reverend Chester WIlliams and Roz McKelvey), and also visited sites of recurring flooding, featured in Jovin’s wall collage. Pomerantz created handmade watermarked paper utilizing flax, a fiber of local historic significance, containing quotes from the interviews, as well as flood-related phrases and ideas recorded during meetings with the Water Department, To read the watermarked text, the paper must be illuminated, just as worsening climate conditions and their disproportionate impacts must be brought to light for mitigation and accountability. Paper is deeply connected to the natural and material history of Germantown, home to North America’s first papermill, and a the birth of an industry that would leave an indelible mark our watersheds.

A second component of this project will be installed at the WaterShed in January of 2026.

For ongoing programming, including film screenings, community meetings, prepared-ness workshops, Water Department and FEMA resource fairs, and more— visit the WaterShed.