By Ann von Dehsen, December 31, 2020 — There are all sorts of connections you can see all [my sister’s] paintings or a lot of her paintings. Her murals are great. They often include working with school-age kids sometimes, you know letting them do parts of the mural too, helping to design it. And she came here to Philly to take a class once with the mural arts program. Most of the murals in Philly are actually done on fabric first, and the fabric is adhered to the wall. I mean you can’t tell — you’d never know that, and it gave her so much of a break because she’s getting up there, from having to paint in the heat and upon the scaffolds and stuff. I mean her husband’s been great. But they’re both in their 70s, you know? So she learned. So, that’s why she came to Philly, to learn about doing the fabric and is in touch with people there. I mean you really have to look closely. It’s almost like a cheesecloth kind of material. I mean some of the stuff still has to be painted in, but a lot of it can be done on it and there’s a special adhesive for it.
She’s done a whole lot. She just has. Whether it’s one-on-one or for a group of people. Just the fact that they live in the heart of Appalachia and they started out there just building a school for the kids way back that didn’t have any schooling and stuff. Even though they’ve faced a lot of adversity, because this is back in the ’70s and some of the mountain people thought they were some of those damn commie hippies moving in. One of the things they got in trouble with — this was back in 1969— and they had the school then and they brought in pictures they talked about the people landing on the moon, and the mountain people said, “No, no, no that never happened. That’s trick photography. How dare you teach our children about this?”
My brother-in-law had long hair like a hippie, and I mean serious things happened to them [like] their tires being shot at. They eventually burned down the school. They were literally laying in their bed one night and a bullet came through one window over their bed and out the next.
I mean, honestly, I would have been phew — back up going north! But they stayed and they worked it out so, you know.