"May This Keep You Safe From Harm" was inscribed on the brass plated bible my mother's grandfather carried in the shirt pocket over his heart during WWII. His body was returned from the region of Alsace where he died of his wounds and somehow the bible made it back to the small valley in Central Pennsylvania my family calls home. The valley is deep and the land is sloping in some areas and flat in others. “The narrows” is a section of road that runs beside a limestone spring filled with wild brown trout. The spring provides irrigation to the farms which were owned by the Lameys and the Shracks and many other families until the Amish arrived during the 1970's and 80's and bought most of the land from those who no longer wished to work the fields as my grandfather did before taking up factory work around the time my mother was born in 1962.
My grandmother, Mary, was a Miller. Coal miners and lathers who were part of the outfit that helped build the pentagon. When Mary left she went on to work three jobs to provide for her children in a similar way my mother did when she and my father divorced after having my brother and I. She had her first child much earlier. My half brother, Joey, a Marine who served his country as his great grandfather did. She became a mother at 16 years old. This project explores aspects of her family history and tradition that have directly influenced the trajectory of her life. It is a reflection of her laden memories and how they shaped her existence within the backdrop of the harsh physical environment her family has called home for generations.
“The inherited land’s soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see. What is left are the unshaken beliefs, carried throughout the bloodlines of family, stretching like veins across the vast rugged terrain of post industrial America.”
Ongoing
