View from Home

Betsy Jaeger, American, born 1954

View from Home, 2020

View from Home is part of Betsy Jaeger’s current exhibition titled Requiem for a Neighborhood, which examines the effects of a strip mining project that was started and eventually abandoned in her neighborhood of Sugar Grove near Morgantown, West Virginia. The stripping company, after having made its money, declared bankruptcy and left the state of West Virginia to clean up after them, which because of budget concerns may never happen. Many of the works in the exhibition are painted from inside looking out; she contrasts the electricity-powered comfort of the interior with the visible long-term effects of burning fossil fuels in order to alert viewers to the cost of our comforts. Requiem for a Neighborhood also explicitly addresses a shift in the constructed identity of West Virginia as coal country: in Jaeger’s own words, the early 21st century is “a period of change from coal as king to coal as history.” Jaeger uses art specifically because of its accessibility and communicative ability; she wants both to draw attention to these issues for the people of the present and apologize to the people of the future for the damage we have done to the land. Label by Laura Reitze

Kitchen Window Looking North

Betsy Jaeger, American, born 1954

Kitchen Window Looking North, 2010

Artist Betsy Jaeger is a native of Morgantown, West Virginia, where she collaborates with her local arts community center to document the changes perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry in her exhibition “Inside Looking Out.” Jaeger has watched her hometown be used as a testing ground for strip mining, extracted to ruin after the mining company eventually declared bankruptcy. In its entirety, the exhibition uses windows as metaphors for keeping us safe and allowing us to look outside of ourselves. This particular image is of the inside and outside of Jaeger’s kitchen windows. On the left, the interior space of the room floats amidst her front yard, while the exterior vision on the right underscores the reality: the house sparrow attacking a bluebird nest against a background of the “invasive species” of the strip mine. Label by Kristin Rheins

Bushy Fork Coal Sludge Impoundment

Vivian Stockman, American, born 1962

Bushy Fork Coal Sludge Impoundment, 2009

Vivian Stockman’s photographs of various mountaintop removal mining sites and coal sludge impoundments in West Virginia are part of her activism against the environmental injustices committed by the coal industry in Appalachia. Her photos of the Bushy Fork Coal Impoundment illustrate the strange geometry and colors of a landscape scarred by industry. The unnatural blue color of the lagoon is the result of the various chemicals used in coal refinement, which are subsequently stored at sites like Bushy Fork or are injected into abandoned underground mines, where it risks contaminating groundwater. Construction on this impoundment began in 1995 and its owner, Massey Energy, has been expanding the dam ever since, despite local opposition. Label by Sarah Roberts

Sludge Creek

Cynthia Ryan Kelly, American

Sludge Creek, 2006

Cynthia Ryan Kelly is an artist whose works are narrative, colorful, and spontaneous works that aim to weave social commentary into her compositions. This piece comes from Kelly’s “Stories about Mountain Top Removal” series. Kelly attaches a quick statement to the piece; “Seemingly neutral people shake hands, make deals and destroy creation.” Through the saturated colors and contrasting black coal sludge, a sense of toxicity and almost grotesque mood is given.  Kelly uses this piece to comment on the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining on communities surrounding those areas. Human figures are shown drudging through what is coal waste, while a mountain above their homes seems to be blown up, illustrating how the process of extracting coal to fulfill capitalist demands destroys the lives of those who live in the ecosystem with the coal. Label by Isabel Schreur