Pennsylvania Pastoral

“Pastoral” refers to the lush landscape of Northwestern Pennsylvania, but also to my father’s work as pastor of a tiny rural congregation in the region during the 1980s. A hundred years after the oil boom that defined the area, the local industry was dying, businesses stood vacant and young people left for work elsewhere. My father often took me along on his visits to congregants, and I listened as they told stories about what they had lost: a job, a home, a child. My art conveys the weight of this absence but also the world-shaping ability of the storytellers who remained. I now make my images from the perspective of the child I once was, who glimpsed and overheard a mysterious adult world, and was just beginning to realize that the adults may not have understood this world either. While the images in this series are based on my recollections of a childhood steeped in church life, my work is not overtly religious in nature, and is appropriate for an inclusive library environment.Through dream-like recollections of my own specific childhood experience, I explore the experience of vulnerable people who “overhear” their own lives and find power through storytelling.