Artist’s Statement
Ore Mountain I and Ore Mountain II were painted shortly after my first visit to Katahdin Ironworks near Brownville, Maine. This town is a historic site where there was once a thriving Ironworks company.
The town was built around the Ironworks. It is also the site of the Silver Lake Hotel, which became a resort site for a while after the Ironworks shut down. The area was heavily logged to fuel the crucible that melted the ore into iron, and the ore was mined off the surface of the mountain for years. The mountainside at Katahdin Ironworks remains scarred and bleeding from the scraping of its sides for iron ore. There are fossilized pine cones and leaves scattered on the scarred surface and a blood-red stream (named Blood Brook) trickles alongside the mountain laden with the ore from this site. Long before Katahdin Ironworks, this site was a source for red ochre for ceremonial burial rituals and for people dying skins and tools. Today, it is a site that attracts hikers (in the Gulf Hagas gorge) and history buffs, with one kiln and the crucible remaining on the site.
My trip to Katahdin Ironworks inspired me to look at the remnants of mining and its environmental impacts. It was the beginning of a larger project and the resulting series of paintings that explore the marks and tracks that humans leave on this planet through excavation.