Its good to be here…finally

I’m finally here in Aliquippa for the long-term. For most of the last two years I have wanted to move up here, and this weekend that desire finally reached its conclusion. Saturday was graduation, Sunday I drove up, and now I’m sitting on my friend Joel’s front porch looking out on a city I have come to know and love.

It is the end of May and it is still too cold to be sitting out on your front porch at 8:30am in the morning. I am under dressed, like I’ve just come from Georgia. I wouldn’t be out here except I accidentally locked myself out of Joel’s house, while also managing to lock my office and car keys inside. The inconvenience has given me a few moments to reflect.

When I arrived at 1028 Main Street, the sight of Aliquippa Impact’s new offices, it was overcast and beginning to rain. I was early, so I decided to walk down to the Aliquippa Library and renew my library card and to order Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. It was the first time I’d walked down Franklin Avenue since January. In the winter Aliquippa is covered in browns and grays from the streets right up to the sky. It is spring now, and what greenery there is now is in one its brightest periods. Flowers are blooming where they are planted, the trees are covered in leafs.

You can find beauty where you will look for it. Aliquippa is no different. While admittedly abused and not always true of all aspects of life, the age old adage, “You see what you want,” can apply here. If a person wanted to see only hopelessness, chaos and disorder in Aliquippa, they probably could. But there is also plenty of natural beauty here, architectural beauty left from a previous age of economic prominence, and—heaven knows—the people are beautiful.

The tragedy for many is that they do not choose to see the beauty in Aliquippa. I’m getting ready for my first graduate school residency this June, and I came across a quote that said something to the effect of, “art can force us to see that which we would not normally look at.” I think that is a positive and powerful aspect of the arts, and again, often an abused one. Some controversial art prides itself on the reproduction of human filth, or even the use of human body parts, in order to show people things they would not normally choose to see. But its abuses aside, art can positively force us to see things for how they could/should be instead of how they are.

As an artist moving in to Aliquippa, I think part of my responsibility is to produce work that shows Aliquippa’s beauty. Now that I am settled, I’m excite to get to work. Its good to be here…Finally!

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