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Tile Mosaic - If These Hills Could Talk

You know there’s gonna be people that say, ‘This isn’t what our community is about,’ and then there are gonna be some that will say, ‘Yeah, this is exactly what our community is about.’  It’s gonna be happy.  It’s gonna be sad. It’s gonna be awesome.  I think it will take a while for people to really grasp it.  I think it’s gonna take a while.

- Maxine Clay, community coordinator of the tile mosaic project

As a result of the Harlan County Project, a 34 foot by 9 foot tile mosaic mural designed and built by the community is permanently located in the lobby of the Edsel Godbey Appalachian Center on Southeast’s Cumberland campus.  The mural features a grandmother telling her grandson stories sitting on a front porch in front of a sweeping mountain vista.  The grandmother’s stories, which are taken directly from local oral histories, are spelled out in clay in the mountains. 

Click for 'If These Hills Could Talk' Gallery

If you bring people from Lynch in here to do some tile with some from over in Holmes Mill or Evarts, all you can do is talk, so they are gonna bring up stories, and they're gonna build some kind of connection, some kind of bridge.

-Danielle Burke

The mural is a collaboration between the community, visiting artists, and the college Pottery Program.  All of the story tiles that make up the mountains were handmade. Maxine Clay and Danielle Burke coordinated mural production during the summer of 2005.  Clay also designed the mural’s border.  Joe Scopa, director of the Southeast Art Department, supervised the production of the project and created the figures and porch rail.  Joyce Ogden and her students in the public art program at Spalding University in Louisville provided advice, training, and labor.  Hundreds of others participated in the design and production. 

The day I placed tile, I paired up with a guy named Brandon.  I had seen him before, but never had a conversation with him.  So there we were talking about where we graduated high school, what kinds of sports we played, where we work, and what our major was while we were working.  We put putty on the back of the tile pieces.  I puttied them up and handed them to Brandon, and he placed them on the wall.  We also talked about how there are not many good paying jobs around here and how drugs are a huge problem.  Projects like these are good for our community, because they bring people together and give them an opportunity to relax and talk about all kinds of problems in our area.  I think if projects like this continue things in our area will continue to get better.

-Ryan Williams 

Click for enlarged view of 'If These Hills Could Talk'

  I loved breaking up the tile.  It helped my anger problem tremendously.  At the same time, it helped my self-esteem and my depression that I get from sitting around the house.  Volunteering got me out of the house, it got me involved in the community, and it helped me meet a lot of great people. 

-  Jackie Yellman

 I worked on the tile project.  I really enjoyed it.  I have never been involved in anything like this.  I took my son with me one evening and he thought it was “so cool.”  I am proud to be able to say that my child and myself were part of it.  I wish I could have put more time into it, but I couldn’t and do my job and two other night classes.  I know other students put in days and days and they did an excellent job and I thank them.  This was a good way to get people together.  I talked to people that I had never spoken to before this project.  Projects like this get people together.  I wish there were more things like this we could all be a part of

-Tisha Ball

Mosaic Projects
 

 
Community Planning

 
So Close
So Far Away

If These Hills
Could Talk 

PMSS Hopscotch Mural

 
Cloverfork Mural