The American Guide

HIDEAWAY - Camp Ellis, Maine

Camp Ellis is a small and mostly seasonal cottage community sitting at the mouth of the Saco River where it spills into the sourthern end of Saco Bay, a small embayment in the greater Gulf of Maine. As well as I like to think I know my native state, somehow I never knew of this community’s existence until recently.

It sits almost hidden by the tall pine forest you drive through, east of the north-south Maine Turnpike corridor and further east of one of the more tourist-trap-ridden sections of Route 1. Located in the town of Saco, it’s just down the coast from Old Orchard Beach, a popular summer beach destination, riddled with clam shacks, souvenir and t-shirt shops, as well as the oceanfront amusement park Palace Playland.

So it’s a bit of reprieve from all that hoopla just up the coast, being positioned at that furthest point of land where the river meets the sea. This community keeps their attractions simple with the Camp Ellis General Store being one of the few businesses in town. If you’re looking for greater entertaiment you might take a ride offshore out to the Wood Island Lighthouse, considered haunted after a gruesome murder-suicide in the 1890s.

A small and simple town it may be, however it does have a big problem: a shrinking shoreline. In the late 1800s it was decided the Army Corp of Engineers would build rock jettys to protect the navigable channel of the Saco River. Ships needed to travel upriver to the milltowns of Biddeford and Saco. The decision however was based on a misunderstaning of the geological processes of the river and the sea, so for 100+ years the community has been contending with a beach that isn’t properly replenishing itself with sand. They’ve lost dozens of homes and bits of streets to the rising tide that keeps pressing west.

And that’s pretty much all I know about this small, seaside rivertown I’ve only just discovered. I can’t imagine how crowded it must be in the heat of summer, but at sundown on a Sunday night in the early throes of winter you’ve got the place to yourself – almost no one around except a dozen stray cats and a fleet of commercial fishing boats waiting to go back to work when the sun comes up on Monday.

WALNUT VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL - Winfield, Kansas

In the summer of 1966, some young Kansas college students traveled to the iconic folk festivals in Philadelphia, Newport and Mountain View, Arkansas. They returned with a passion to bring the same type of gathering to their rural college town of Winfield. One of these students was Stuart Mossman, a pioneer American guitar maker. Fueled by widespread interest in his guitars, two successful folk festivals were held at Southwestern College, and, in 1972, the event moved to the Cowley County Fairgrounds, where the Walnut Valley Festival has been held ever since.

This is part 3 of 3 on the Walnut Valley Music Festival (click here for part 1 & 2):

PORTRAITS - The most enduring memory is the memory of a face. The stories most often remembered are those told with contorted skin and the sparkle of a wary eye. The finest moments come when a stranger's gaze becomes a friend's embrace. In another's eyes we see ourselves, and in that reflection, we see the universe. Tiny parts of a huge whole we are, man and womenkind alone together, adrift yet locked arm in arm, the wonderment of recognition in our bones, the glory of music in our souls.

WALNUT VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL - Winfield, Kansas

In the summer of 1966, some young Kansas college students traveled to the iconic folk festivals in Philadelphia, Newport and Mountain View, Arkansas. They returned with a passion to bring the same type of gathering to their rural college town of Winfield. One of these students was Stuart Mossman, a pioneer American guitar maker. Fueled by widespread interest in his guitars, two successful folk festivals were held at Southwestern College, and, in 1972, the event moved to the Cowley County Fairgrounds, where the Walnut Valley Festival has been held ever since.

This is part 2 of 3 on the Walnut Valley Music Festival (click here for part 1):

NIGHTTIME - Since it can still be downright hot in September on the Southern Plains, nightfall is always a welcome thing. For the faithful along the Walnut River, however, it is also the start of a long procession, heralded by Coopers Hawks and Kingfishers, serenaded by pre-war Martins and flat-head Gibsons, woven together with parachute canopies and neon peace signs. It is a journey for the hardy and the profound, for lovers and those scorned in love, for the curious and the crusty, for the humble and the fierce. It is simply the river of time, whose only destination is the ocean of dawn, and upon which music is the only means of travel.

WALNUT VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL - Winfield, Kansas

Part 1 of 3

In the summer of 1966, some young Kansas college students traveled to the iconic folk festivals in Philadelphia, Newport and Mountain View, Arkansas. They returned with a passion to bring the same type of gathering to their rural college town of Winfield. One of these students was Stuart Mossman, a pioneer American guitar maker. Fueled by widespread interest in his guitars, two successful folk festivals were held at Southwestern College, and, in 1972, the event moved to the Cowley County Fairgrounds, where the Walnut Valley Festival has been held ever since.

In the ensuing forty-four years, a steadfast community of music lovers and players has taken hold on this wide, sweeping curve of the Walnut River, under groves of Pecan, Walnut and Cottonwood trees. Every September they gather, from all corners of the globe, in all manner of tents and trailers, in every possible weather, to renew their allegiance to this family of their own making. Neighborhoods exist as real as any on any street of any town, and live and grow over time with the depth and love that a true neighborhood should. To many of it's inhabitants, Winfield Village is their true home, the one they work the rest of the year to return to.

Folk and Bluegrass music is certainly not high on the pop culture radar, but we do have our stars: people like John McCutcheon, Tommy Emmanuel and Tom Chapin, or Norman Blake, John Hartford and Doc Watson back in the day. We have folks like Allison Krause and Mark O'Conner who came as teenagers, camped along the river bank, entered the fiddle contests, won the fiddle contests, and went on to pretty respectable careers in the larger music world. We also have a blazing village intertwined with home-grown music and exquisite food, built with long-standing companionship over years of shared joys and sorrows; communities entirely populated by folks who never once set foot inside the stadium to see the stars. They have their own stages, with their own stars, their own reasons to lie awake with the dawning light holding a new song on their lips, or a new tune on a well-worn guitar. These people, many believe, are the heart of this festival. This, many believe, is the way we should live our lives.

This is part 1 of 3 on the Walnut Valley Music Festival:

DAYTIME - Morning shade is gold for campers. Good for lingering breakfasts and cooling coffee as the first rounds of "Sally Goodin" rousts the late sleepers. One does not want to waste any great amount of time sleeping. Afternoon shade draws in the devout, devoted and the die-hard players. Add a cool breeze and even the hottest picker will stick around long enough to show the youngsters a trick or two. Evening draws near and food fit for royalty is laid out beside simple peasant feasts. Somehow, the glorious meals disappear without a noticeable lapse in the tunes drifting up with the campfire smoke.

THE ANACOSTIA RIVER - Washington, D.C.

How a river can survive sewage overflow, runoff, and dumping, is a miracle to me. The conditions of the river have greatly improved in the past few years, but there is still a long way to go. The way that a body of water can draw in and connect a community of people that have little else in common is an exceptional thing. Because of this project I met people from age seven to age 70 that have a relationship with the Anacostia. It’s like an artery for the city.  I wanted to meet the people who have loved the river through its hard times—the people who treat its banks like a front porch, those who fish and kayak in its waters, and those who are tirelessly working to restore balance to the ecosystem.  

I have seen change since I began the project in 2012. But context and history are important to explain that change. The Anacostia neighborhood used to be a suburb of D.C. called Uniontown. In the 1800s there was a restrictive covenant that prevented African Americans from purchasing land there. Frederick Douglass broke that in the 1870s by purchasing the home of the developer of Uniontown. African Americans started buying up land in Barry Farms, just north of Anacostia, as it became an attractive area to move to. In the late 1950s whites began moving out of Anacostia to the suburbs; highways were created; neighborhoods became very segregated, separated from the rest of D.C. by the river. Now, though, East of the River communities are being developed and the cost of living there is rising. Rapid development has already begun on the west banks in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and especially the Navy Yard.

The completion of the Anacostia Riverwalk trail, which is a recreational trail that runs along the river, and the conception of the 11th Street Bridge Park (envisioned to be kind of like New York’s Highline) are both opening up access to current residents of neighborhoods along the river, but also attracting people from other parts of the city. That’s a good thing, but it’s also important to keep in mind the communities who have been there all along, not just those brought by attractive development.

It took me a year to find someone who would let me photograph them cooking and eating a fish from the river. That was my holy grail, and something that I felt was important to the story just because of the initial inception of the project. Encountering the same people at the river more than once was also difficult. Every time I went to photograph I’d meet new people so it was like I was always starting over. But once I did get to know people better, that was the reward. Whenever someone would let me visit them at home or introduce me to someone new, I felt so honored and it also affirmed for me personally that storytelling is what I want to do. It brought me into a new community. Even if no one looked at this project, being a part of a new-to-me community was worth the effort; it really enriched my life and my understanding of Washington.  

Big change is needed, the silt at the bottom of the river is full of pollutants, and that’s not going to go away with just a trash clean-up. But every little bit helps. Every person calmed by the peace of the river in the middle of the capital, every person who discovers that they love fishing or kayaking, every plastic bottle that someone picks up, and every time a plastic bag doesn’t get used in the first place.

Editors note: the above text was excerpted from Becky Harlan’s June, 2015 interview with WPOW|NOW.

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STEEL VALLEY - Braddock, Pennsylvania

Braddock is the last city in the “Steel Valley” that has a working steel mill. It is also the poorest city in Allegheny County. With a median household income of just above $20,000, Braddock barely floats above the poverty line. Unemployment is not much higher than the national average; it’s no greater than 7%. So why is Braddock so poor? If most people have jobs, what kind of jobs do people that live here have? Why are there so few businesses on Braddock Ave? Why does U.S. Steel not work to try to improve the area surrounding its mill? Why is nobody stepping forward to lead this city out of its desperate situation?

As to the question of why Braddock is so poor, I can only guess that it must be because of classic urban decline principles: whites with jobs (and union benefits) left, and the only people that didn’t leave were those that couldn’t afford to leave, that is, mostly poor blacks (although the city of Braddock does still contain an unusually large white population; 22% white according to the 2010 U.S. Census). When the high-paying steel jobs left, the businesses that lined the town’s streets began to disappear. With less people to spend money, businesses naturally struggled and eventually they had to go, too. But even so, the neighboring town of Homestead has its fair share of businesses. Although not the healthiest set of businesses to have in a downtown - liquor stores, delis, smoke shops, and dollar stores - Homestead still has some semblance of commercial activity. Braddock, on the other hand, has none.

It’s an odd transition riding through the steel valley. Starting in Pittsburgh, the old hot metal bridge leading to the Southside works has been converted for bike, pedestrian, and vehicular use. The Southside Works site, a massive brownfield that plagued the city for years, has been re-purposed as a mixed-use shopping, living, and dining neighborhood, all done up suburban style with cheap stucco designs and big boxes, yet set in a decidedly urban environment - walkable, with minimal parking lots to destroy the pedestrian experience. Continuing from Southside Works, past the new Steelers training facilities and the medical research buildings, one eventually ends up in Homestead. After a long ride down a nature trail, the first thing to be seen is Sandcastle waterpark. Sandcastle does quite well in the hot summer months, but cannot compete with the Pittsburgh classic, Kennywood amusement park that sits on a bluff only a bit past Homestead. After the waterpark comes The Waterfront, a large big box retail complex that occupies the former U.S. Steel Homestead Works site. The only reminders of the Homestead Works, besides a few sheds at the east end of the site, are twelve smokestacks lined up next to each other at the beginning of The Waterfront. The Waterfront is a dauntingly large complex, and with its sea of parking lots, and difficult entry from the city of Homestead, it has been much criticized. In fact, it was built about five years before the Southside Works, and was used as a model of what not to do with the Southside Works site.

As one rides through the steel valley going west to east, one travels back in time. First, the most recent brownfield development, designed with principles of good urbanism in mind, then the large, sprawling, suburban shopping center, urbanistically uninteresting, yet at the same time, an important piece of the brownfield puzzle in the steel valley. After The Waterfront, Carrie Furnace stands tall and proud, as a beacon of the new interest that has emerged in preservation and sustainable development. Carrie Furnace, a still-intact blast furnace that once supplied the almighty Homestead Works with molten iron, is awaiting a new life as a museum of the steel industry, as well as a performing arts and light industrial facility. A mixture of uses quite unlike anything happening today.

Finally, there’s the Edgar Thomson Works. The last functioning integrated steelmaking facility in the Monongahela River Valley. Where once many mills churned out smoke night and day, seven days a week, now only one giant remains. The Edgar Thomson Works is an impressive factory, as all steel mills are. It takes up a massive swath of land almost as big as the entire city of Braddock, and what’s even more impressive is that it once employed enough people to fill the entire city and parts of the surrounding area. The Edgar Thomson Works today only employs about 900, most of whom live outside of Braddock, since they have relatively high-paying jobs that allow them to escape the miserable air quality and generally poor quality of life in Braddock.

U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works looms behind the houses in the hills of North Braddock in an ominous fashion. Day and night, the great behemoth billows smoke as train whistles blow, and the houses around the steel mill sit almost perpetually under artificially cloudy skies. It is no surprise that Allegheny County has one of the highest counts of poisonous Sulfur Dioxide in the state of Pennsylvania, more than 50% greater than the EPA’s recommendations of what is safe to inhale. As one walks through the area immediately surrounding the mill, a smell like rotten eggs penetrates the air and burns the throat.

Confronting the harsh truths of Braddock, PA, and other industrial enclaves of the United States is hard, and as someone interested in urban planning, I always ask myself, “what can we do about places like this to improve the quality of life for the residents and make things a little better?” And lucky for me, John Fedderman is already leading the way in answering that question for Braddock. By building a large community garden near the steel mill, restoring a local church and re-purposing it as a community center, and engaging in community-based job training and job-creation efforts, Fedderman has been one of the most progressive mayors in all of America, tackling massive issues on a small scale. John Fedderman has served as mayor of Braddock in 2005. After completing a master’s in Public Policy at Harvard, Fedderman moved to Braddock to do social work for AmeriCorps, and after several years in the town, decided to run for mayor, winning by a very small margin

Creative leadership like Mayor Fedderman’s is a crucial step to making Braddock a great city once again, and without his help, the town would be a few long steps behind its current position, which can be said to slowly be getting better. By building a new playground, converting an old church to a community center, and starting a community garden, Fedderman has helped provide several massive resources for the people of Braddock to use. While a playground and community center are good for a neighborhood for rather obvious reasons, a community garden helps in a number of ways, some more subtle than others. A community garden is not only a good way to provide fresh produce at reduced rates to citizens (especially when they live in a food desert like Braddock), but it is also a crucial grounds for job training. As a poor community with few businesses, young children and teens in Braddock have very few places where they can find jobs nearby, especially if they do not have cars. A community garden helps to fill a need for jobs that not only keep teens busy and off the street, but also jobs that can serve as crucial stepping stones into more serious employment.

This type of on-the-ground, hands-on community planning is an incredibly important first step to making Braddock a great place to live, and since it is clear that federal or state  funding for projects such as these is not going to happen anytime soon, Fedderman has made the most with what he has: a lot of vacant land and very little money. Since Braddock is nowhere near building new housing (aside from one senior housing project), and cashing in on the property taxes that come with new construction, Braddock must make the best of its current situation. It is unlikely that things will dramatically improve anytime soon, and so for some time, Fedderman’s leadership in Braddock and the community-based planning and organization efforts there will continue to be the last leg the Braddock stands on. As it is, Braddock is an incredibly interesting town with plenty of potential to be something special, and with the way things are going now, it would seem like it is already on the way to becoming a special place again, but until then, there is still a long way to go in the process of turning Braddock around.

LITTLE CHICAGO: THE CITY OF MURALS - Steubenville, Ohio

Entering downtown Steubenville, Ohio from the north, one can view the visible demarcation line that exists where Sunset Boulevard turns into Market Street. This is where the whole architectural geography of the city has changed, and an explosion of now foreclosed businesses and empty lots have taken the place of this once burgeoning steel town. Steubenville has had a slow burn of struggle for as long as I can remember. I was born here, had family and neighbors that worked in the mills, and spent a lot of my teenage years downtown. Even then, the economy was suffering. Now, with a poverty rate of 10.6%, nearly 57% of the population can’t afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

Steubenville serves as the county seat of Jefferson County (45 minutes west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) with a population of close to 20,000 people according to the 2010 Census, and has experienced decline in economic and populace growth since the mid-1980s. From the beginning of the 20th Century, the area garnered the reputation as a hot spot for criminal and gangland activity, effectively earning the name of Little Chicago. Mafia ties were strong. My grandfather would tell me stories of how the city served as a go-between for gun runners traveling from Chicago to New York. You could stop in the city for a meal and a drink, play the tables and bed a girl, and quite possibly hear the crooning of the not-yet-known Dean Martin on one of the speakeasy’s stages (in between his stint as a waiter and blackjack dealer).

In recent times the city has garnered more negative attention due to allegations of political corruption, which reached critical mass throughout the nation with the exposure of the Steubenville High School rape case in 2012, where a high school aged-woman was sexually assaulted by two members of the school’s football team, and various employees of the administration were indicted in trying to cover up the matter. This incident has become the perfect illustration of the prevalence of rape culture in our society, and has further blighted a city with no recourse.

This is a shame to those in the know, because there is beauty in the community, both in its people and structures. Organizations such as the Urban Mission distribute over 869,284 pounds of groceries to low-income families throughout the area, and have implemented housing initiatives and mortgage assistance programs to those in need. Eastern Gateway Community College has one of the lowest tuition rates in the state of Ohio, and was a true blessing when I returned home from losing my job in 2007. The faculty and staff of the college were paramount in me excelling in my courses and finding a new direction, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without that support system in place.

Another hidden treasure scattered throughout the city is the work of the mural program. Along with the Little Chicago moniker, Steubenville is also known as the City of Murals. The gallery tour consists of 25 murals spread out over the downtown area. When I was in high school and flunking out of my junior year history class, I managed to save my failing grade by creating a short documentary video on the murals. I remember walking the city with my best friend capturing the images on VHS-C tape, eating Dicarlo’s Pizza by the slice, and visiting my friend’s grandfather who owned an appliance store on Fourth Street. This was, and still is, my favorite memory from downtown.

But now, as I passed that demarcation line and entered the city to take the images you see before you, all I heard was the singing of crickets. Sure there was a football game that day in Pittsburgh, and maybe the citizens of Steubenville were inside enjoying the game, but downtown was barren and ominous. The only thing to shine a light on the proceedings was the murals and their display of elegant craft. It reminded me that beauty can be found anywhere. You just have to look for it.

THE HOME OF THE SQUARE DEAL - Endicott, New York

Endicott is a town in Upstate New York named after Henry B. Endicott, who founded the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company with George F. Johnson in 1899. Industrializing the process of shoe making, the company grew rapidly and was awarded government contracts to make boots for servicemen in both World Wars, becoming the largest shoe manufacturer in the world by the end of 1945. As they grew, Endicott-Johnson turned the city into “The Home of the Square Deal,” based on an idea of welfare capitalism that now seems impossible to imagine. They instituted an eight hour day, built hospitals and provided health care, brought electricity to Main Street, built homes for their workers, parks and carousels for their families. In tribute, the neighboring town of Lestershire, named for the shoe company bought out by Endicott and Johnson, was renamed Johnson City.

An old man stopped me once on the street to talk about E-J, holding a homemade DVD with a photograph of George F. Johnson on the cover. My feeling was that he was going to play it at the American Legion Hall he had parked his car in front of. Although dissenting opinions could be heard, Endicott-Johnson was largely beloved, and few talk about their long decline, what they could have or should have done differently. Endicott- Johnson slowly faded after their peak during World War II and was basically out of business by 1980, although the last factory didnʼt close until 1993. Now it exists in name only, as a subsidiary of a tiny boot company.

IBM also started in Endicott, when The Bundy Manufacturing Company and the International Time Recording Company moved their operations from nearby Binghamton in 1906. IBM never centers in the narrative or looms as large in the collective memory as E-J, even if they followed Endicott-Johnsonʼs example by founding their company in Endicott and adopted the standards set by Endicott-Johnson towards their employees. Perhaps Thomas Watson never inspired the same kind of love.

Endicott has a significant amount of mid century modern architecture, much of it built on or around Washington Avenue, the main thoroughfare that leads to the original IBM headquarters and manufacturing plants, which IBM sold and are now run by much smaller companies at much smaller capacity. Washington Avenue was once a busy street that people used every day, but then it fell into decline. People still remember how bad the Avenue got. It doesnʼt look that much better today. There are still a few restaurants. A couple of places that never look open. The post office. A few damaged people wandering around. Normal people going about their business.

These buildings are what is left to tell a story that is achingly sad in its finality. They possess a certain surety, a quiet power, a certain beauty. A certain resilience, even in defeat. They eulogize the best days, before anyone realized that they were already behind them.

POPULATION 800 - Small towns, Utah

While obtaining my Bachelor of Fine Art, I spent a lot of my time during those six years at Brigham Young University running away.  First finding the need to get out of Provo, then Utah, and eventually America. It resulted in a lot of adventures, stories, and long drives. In these long drives I consistently ran into each one of these small Utah towns, consisting of a corner store, a post office, and a child being pulled on a Radio Flyer. One after another after another.  Slow down to 30 and watch the same old style signs from shops past inch through your windows until you can speed back up to 70 again. Eventually, falling in love with these towns and wanting to know more about the history, the stories, the people. And thus began this project over six years ago.

Temporarily quenching my wanderlust, these towns made me feel as if I was thousand of miles away, when in reality I was only an hour’s drive. It expanded my ability to go out of my comfort zone, to wander aimlessly, to be patient while people told me their life stories. Helped me realize that each one of these mysterious towns has its own individual soul, just like any other major (or small) city in the world I will one day find myself in.

Since returning to Utah after a couple year stint in Chicago, I have picked up the project again. Anxious to dive deeper into these towns, reminding me of why I love this mountainous desert of a state, and all the little places tucked away into each valley.

IN THE MOHAWK VALLEY - Upstate, New York

Today I shot a deer.

I find myself back in the Mohawk Valley, New York's second most famous waterway, gateway to the West when the west was in the east.

I grew up here, Princetown and Rotterdam, Schenectady county. Wanted to leave. Felt like I was passing through, almost everyone here seems like they are just passing, or so I thought. Either that or they've become so fixed, so part of the landscape that they'll talk about farming and not seeming to notice that the barn collapsed 20 years ago and the bailer has saplings growing through it. Thousands of people zoom through here everyday. It's always been a corridor. Ever since a glacier beat a retreat on it's way to somewhere else.

Now I like to come back. For the cheese and the hay fever, for the boredom and slowness. For the sound of a train approaching from 5 miles away.

One morning outside my motel I meet a woman who tells me about her childhood trips to her grandmother’s home near Nelliston. She and her younger brother would disembark (it's what she said) the train at Canajoharie and then they would dine in elegance at the Hotel Wagner. “The painted mural in the dining room” she exclaims, “the ladies in their beautiful dresses…” As she reminisces on the Edwardian splendor that was 1950 Canajoharie I watch the trucks roll on the Thruway and think of the travelers in their finest sweatpants enjoying TCBY at the rest stop. “On Sunday afternoons” she says “we would take a ride to the inn at Stone Arabia for a big country dinner. I picture her and her dear beknickered brother gliding along in a four-in-hand through the countryside, freed at last from all time and space with a chicken dinner between them. “Probably gone now” she muses.

Travel along.

THE WHEELING ISLAND - WEST VIRGINIA

When I’m feeling particularly honest, conversations about what things were like growing up—those ones I’ve avoided until recently—begin something like, “I know we didn’t have money when I was a kid, but to call yourself ‘poor’ in West Virginia means something else.”

Or, to borrow a family refrain: Everything’s relative.

We shopped at the Hostess Bakery Outlet, where bread past its shelf date was sold cheap. Though the old house we lived in looked nice from the outside and was solid on the inside, the living room required a mixture of real and foldable lawn furniture to fill the space. At age 10 I legendarily informed my mother we had to “stop having garage sales because we have nothing left to sell that anyone would buy.” But since we didn’t live on the Island, I never doubted we’d be fine.

From the beginning, I understood that the Wheeling Island was where life was actually rough. It was the home of the dog track and bookies, where the dirty pool was—the one you had to take a shower at home after swimming in. And some of the kids who lived on the Island didn’t have parents at all.

Thanks to blessed youth, these were merely harsh facts, removed from all judgment. Things on the Island were just plain harder in every way; as a kid, I accepted this as such, and was content. Then, at the moment when emerging adulthood would have turned disparate means into tools of cruelty, I moved across the country to a city that might as well have been the Moon.

The Island was left behind, frozen in time. Decades on, it has remained the geographical embodiment of a cautionary tale: Things can always be worse, and it’s only a matter of time until the waters will come for you.

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From the original WPA volume, A Guide To the Mountain State, 1941 (appearing on the volume’s very last page, which feels fitting):

In the years since the above was written and I departed my hometown, the Island has evolved into a more extreme version of what I’d known it to be as a child. The days of horse racing were gone long before my lifetime, leaving only greyhounds in their wake. A new casino-hotel complex attached to the dog track funnels more fugitive cash through the streets than ever before. The addition of fracking money and a new breed of outsider-versus-local tension has created a situation rife with distrust, charging the air with volatility. Simple acts like stopping into a corner store involve being buzzed in and out of locked doors during business hours, even in broad daylight.

The Island continues to flood regularly. Periodically such events are biblical. It’s been that way as long as the Ohio River has run its course, and will continue to be so until the end of time.

Way back when, the populace inhabiting this small plot of land could take to higher ground on either bank of the river when the water rose, and was affluent enough to repair these cycles of damage. The Island’s once gorgeous Victorian behemoths now sit rotting, decorated with scaling shingles in variegated tones. Ornate gingerbread woodwork dangles from their gables, as wraparound porches on the verge of collapse are propped up with beams stuck so far into their yards that they seem more like marooned Viking ships than steady homes.

To this day, a marker at the corner of Virginia and South Penn streets bears testimony to the battery the place continues to survive. Though the rest of the building has long since been leveled, civic duty prevailed in leaving its northwest corner intact. When approached from the wrong angle, this seems truly bizarre until, rounding the corner, its hand-painted record depicting centuries of the Island’s historic floods, broken down by year and water levels reached at that exact spot, reveals itself.

Attached to this wall is an old doorway, gaping onto an empty lot gone to seed. A set of curtains were left to sway in the breeze, imbuing the scene with an ominousness that diffuses all curiosity. Sticking around long enough to see what the Island has been through draws stares from passersby.

One gets the feeling that history wasn’t meant for you... or me.

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DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND - Eureka, California

Behind the Bayshore Mall in Eureka, California, there is a stretch of land on the Humboldt Bay that was once home to the Holmes-Eureka Mill, one of the major mills of Humboldt County. Now the land is home to piles of garbage, transients and drugs. Plagued by a difficult history and a slowing industry, its eventual disappearance was inevitable and wholly changed the place that was once home to such powerful infrastructure.

The remnants of the Holmes-Eureka Mill now occupy what many call “Devil’s Playground”. The name is not an overstatement as the appearance of this place is somewhat post- apocalyptic. Decomposing wooden posts that used to serve as log ponds and docks now stand naked in the water, mere feet from shore. Overgrown, tangled foliage smothers the muddy grounds. What is not shrouded by shrubbery is carpeted with garbage. Molding blue jeans, paint cans, old shopping carts, food packaging and countless other items litter the entire region. Devil’s Playground has been left to rot but it is not uninhabited. Among the mud and trash dwell those who live on the fringes of society. Homeless encampments lay scattered throughout the area. Huts constructed of plywood and tarps hang, cradled by the trees.

Some walls and foundations of the Holmes-Eureka Mill still stand in this surreal place. Crumbling and weathered, much of the cement is now hidden behind a collage of countless spray paintings. Cartoonish characters and bizarre shapes are brought to life by vibrant colors. Within an old mill building that now stands roofless, a man climbs on his ladder, spray painting new colors over the old as music resounds throughout the walls from a boombox. He carries bear mace in his pocket to protect against those who put the devil in Devil’s Playground.

SENSE OF PLACE - Mixed Media on Paper

What defines a place? The objects, the land, the feeling it gives off, or is it the memories you created there? My artwork is about the journey of figuring these questions out. Part of my process is collecting objects from places I reside and visit. Rocks are my favorite choice and I use them as guides to my color palette. I store the collected rocks in jars in my studio. Along with rocks I have collected maps for over 10 years.  

Are maps only a way to find a route to your destination, or do they hold more power than that? I find paper maps are especially important now that everything has become digital. Technology is changing how we experience and remember life.

As soon as we enter the world we start creating maps of our surroundings, and we keep building from there. That’s what life is about, exploring and documenting what we find. This is why maps intrigue me: they hold all the important information we need but they’re not bogged down by emotion.

The first maps I collected were from my childhood, used on family trips. I loved seeing my Dad’s handwritten notes and the highlighted route for each adventure. These memories have become even more precious since my Mother’s passing from cancer this past year.

Place has become even more important to me.  I think a lot about how you define what a place means to you. Is it the people or the memories you have there - can you recreate them? Creating the artwork is about a search for answers and creating a new journey of discovery. I’ve always been inspired by the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Especially, the quote “Sometimes it is a little better to travel than to arrive.” And for me the process of creating is sometimes what intrigues me more than the final piece.  It’s the answers I find on my journey that keep me creating and searching for a means to communicate with my audience.  

And now I feel each piece is about creating a dialogue with my Mom and creating a map to find her.  These pieces are about past travels and the possibilities that are ahead in the future.  There are no boundaries to the memories you hold or the possibilities that you have for reliving them.  Create a new map that will hold and trigger those memories for you. Keep exploring the world around you and the objects it holds.  Find out what a place means to you.

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Editor’s note: Laura’s artistic submission was received recently when we put the call out for alternative contributions to the photos we so often feature. You can read more about the WPA’s Federal Art Project and our recent invitation to submit work here.