"Proud Defiance", Morris Island Lighthouse
by Madeline Carol

Over time, various types of structures have been built on Morris Island, located on the south side of Charleston Harbor, to provide navigation beacons seaward. Since the present lighthouse was built around 1870, Morris Island has witnessed significant change as the ocean has encroached upon its shore, sending its surging waters landward and pushing back the beach. Yet in the front corner of this century, the Morris Island Lighthouse was a lighthouse station well distanced from the sea, grouped with a two story residence, a school building, some offices and some utility buildings. In 1938 with the sea encroaching, the buildings around the lighthouse were abandoned.

Over a century has now come and gone since the erection of the Morris Island Lighthouse, and the face of Morris Island has changed. All that remains of the Morris Island Lighthouse Station that stood on solid ground is the empty tube of a tower occupied by the rumbling sounds of the ocean pounding relentlessly upon its foundations. The home, utility buildings, and outbuildings were demolished; and all that remains has been quietly buried in a watery grave beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The light is gone from its tower; the automatic light on Sullivan's Island has taken over its role. The Morris Island Lighthouse no longer beams into the emptiness of the ocean's horizon, but instead itself fills a spot in that empty horizon as a brick and white tower that has defied the elements, the north-eastern storms, the hurricanes, and the changing landscape of a fragile coast. Surrounded by water, seemingly impervious to the weather, and a defender against numerous adversities, the Morris Island Lighthouse is simply proud defiance. Not even the intense power of the wall of Hugo's eye, with its pounding storm surge, was powerful enough to whip her.

In another of her great watercolor paintings, Madeline Carol has captured that energetic and stately defiance as the surge of a windy ocean bears down its force on this proud lighthouse. As this structure defends itself against the continuing assault with the vigor of life and determination, even though it is now some half a mile from the high water mark of Morris Island and surrounded by approximately 18 feet of water, Madeline Caroluses that energy of defiance to invoke in the struggle a ghostly apparition of a time when the site was also one of serenity and service and a cluster of high ground buildings. Again with her flair for colorful impressionism in watercolors, Madeline captures the present and invokes the image of a time past in yet another of her creative prints from the Spirits of Charleston Collection -- "Proud Defiance," the print that keeps on remembering.

Madeline Carol, Capturing the Spirits
Art Gallery