The Cloudmakers

Raised in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania, I barely noticed the surrounding tall towers that billowed with smoke against our backdrop of green mountains and rolling hills. They had been there all my life. Other children called the structures from the powerplants "cloudmakers", sharing folkstories from their families about the origins of clouds.

This nostalgia was shattered by the realization that the same industries supporting our families and neighbors were simultaneously poisoning our air and water, and in turn, us. The Cloudmakers wrestles with this dissonance, utilizing digital manipulation through Adobe Photoshop, Fresco, and Canva to layer dreamy childhood landscapes and memories with the industrial machinery of local power stations. By fabricating these scenes, I am replicating the unsettling tension of my own upbringing.