01/08/2026
This past semester, I struggled to settle on a final project that was both interesting and important to me. It turns out that capturing "home" was the solution.
My hometown and I have a complicated relationship; American suburban life, in short, is not for me. Stepping right outside of our "suburbia," however, leads to a world of beauty. Though the human element of where I come from may be uninspiring, the landscape of rural Appalachia which we reside upon is anything but. I believe that we greatly underappreciate the elegance of our environment.
It felt too formal to just put my project statement as the body of this post, so here it is:
" Take a moment to think about your hometown. What is the first thing that jumps to mind? What are its defining characteristics? Personally, I think of the tall hills and swooping valleys of rural Appalachia. In all the flatness of Rochester, I find myself wanting to share with others the beauty of the landscape where I come from.
In this series, I have assembled scenes that are commonplace in my region of Northeastern Pennsylvania: old, or even abandoned farms, rivers that twist and turn into the horizon, and mountains that forever impose themselves onto the landscape. The combination of rural American influence and natureโs elegance is something that is not only endlessly beautiful, but sentimental to me in many ways; after all, I spent 18 formative years there.ย
I hope that you may discover a similar appreciation for this incredible, mostly hidden-away portion of the United States."
If you're a local reading this, hopefully that wasn't your backyard I was in!