Description
“OHIO: The Hurt of It All” (acrylic on heavy watercolor paper) reflects on Ohio as both family history and national mirror. Centered on my father—born in Ohio in 1929, one of ten children, self-described “hillbilly,” and the first in his family to earn a college degree—the work traces a journey from rural hardship to public service, social work, and advocacy. Surrounding family imagery are symbols of Ohio’s agricultural, industrial, environmental, and political transformations: Akron’s Goodyear smokestacks, the 1939 Fisher Body strike, Monarch butterflies, the opioid crisis, civil-rights activism, anti-Haitian racism in Springfield, and the killing of Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Recasting Ohio’s slogan, “The Heart of It All,” as “The Hurt of It All,” the work considers how personal memory intersects with the enduring social, environmental, and political wounds of the United States.
