[NEohioPAL] Final Days for "Growing Season" Art Exhibt at Ashtabula Arts Center

[Pamela Hammond]

The Ashtabula Arts Center, in collaboration with Kent State University
Ashtabula, will be presenting the documentary exhibit "Growing Season: The
Life of a Migrant Community."  The photos by Gary Harwood and text by David
Hassler will be on display in the Art Center's main gallery through November
24.  Admission to the gallery is free.



Photographer Gary Harwood first began photographing the migrant workers at
the K. W. Zellers and Son, Inc., family farm in Hartville, Ohio, during the
summer of 2001 while on assignment for Kent State University.   At the time,
Kent State nursing and translation faculty and students, along with other
organizations, were treating and working with the migrant workers and their
families at the Hartville Migrant Community Center.



Harwood was so impressed and inspired by what he saw at the Migrant Center
that he knew he wanted to make the migrant community his next project.  Over
the next four seasons, Harwood photographed the community of Mexican
American and Mexican migrant families, capturing the unique lifestyle of
this strong and caring community of families who travel back and forth each
year between Ohio and their homes in the southern United States and Mexico.
Of the approximately 130 agricultural migrant camps in Ohio, most provide
housing only for single men.  Zeller's is different in that they allow
entire families to migrate, live and work together in the fields (once they
are of age).



At the start of the project, Harwood says that he anticipated that he would
be documenting hardship.



 "Migrant workers continually face difficult conditions while trying to
support themselves and their families," reads an excerpt from the website,
www.growingseason.net.   "Farm work is physical, hot, and dirty. The days in
the fields are long and exhausting. Growers can be brutal employers, and
there is no shortage of documented cases of terrible living and working
conditions.



"In Hartville, however, Gary found a different story.



"Here the workers and their families live in a strong, tightly knit
community supported by the Hartville Migrant Center and many caring
neighbors."



Hartville's community provides a range of in-house health, education, and
legal services that are not usually available to migrant workers anywhere in
the country since there are few government regulations to support or offer
aid to migrant workers.  But the benefits that the community of Hartville
sees from taking better care of their workers are many.



"About 70 percent of the workers return annually to this small northeastern
Ohio town where they have established solid friendships and stable lives."


 In 2004, Harwood teamed up with writer David Hassler to create the
documentary project.



"That spring, when the workers returned to the farm, David began
interviewing the migrants as well as community members and volunteers at the
Center. Working from the transcripts of his interviews, David wrote
first-person narratives that speak with the voices of the people themselves.



"We both understood that the success of this project required that we earn
and maintain the respect and trust of the community. Throughout this process
of collecting images and stories, we met often to share our discoveries and
to see where our separate paths of work met and how each complemented the
other, creating an unfolding and fascinating study of a people and place.



"'Growing Season' portrays the life of a community rich in social capital
and gives voice in a new way to a group of people largely unseen and
misunderstood. Our hope is that these portraits-in pictures and words-will
deepen others' understanding of the migrant experience and perhaps offer an
important contribution to the ongoing dialogue about migrant labor and
immigration laws."



KSU Photographer Gary Harwood has won four national awards from the Council
for the Advancement and Support of Education, was named the 2001 University
Photographers Association of America's Photographer of the Year, and won the
2005 James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award from the Ohio News
Photographers Association.  His work has appeared in numerous national
publications and he received a 2006 Artists and Communities grand from the
Ohio Arts Council.



David Hassler is the program and outreach director for the Wick Poetry
Center at KSU.  He is the author of two books of poems, "Sabishi: poems from
japan" and "Red Kimono, Yellow Barn."  He is co-editor of "A Place to Grow:
Voices and Images of Urban Gardeners" and "Learning by Heart: Contemporary
American Poetry about School."  He has received an Individual Artist
Fellowship and Artists and Communities grant from the Ohio Arts Council and
the Richard Devine Memorial Award for Poetry.  His poems and essays have
also appeared in numerous journals.



Harwood's and Hassler's "Growing Season" project was funded in part by the
Ohio Arts Council.  A sampling of their photos and stories can be seen at
www.growingseason.net.   Copies of the book "Growing Season: A Life of a
Migrant Community" may be purchased from Kent State University Press at
http://upress.kent.edu/.



The Ashtabula Arts Center's gallery is open Monday through Thursday from
9:00 a.m. - 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.  The
gallery is also open prior to G. B. Community Theatre performances and
during intermission.  Admission to the gallery is free.



The Arts Center is located at 2928 W. 13th Street in Ashtabula.



The Arts Center is funded in part by the Ohio Arts Council.



Pamela Hammond
Public Relations/Marketing Coordinator
Ashtabula Arts Center
Phone/Fax: 440.964.3396
aac at ashartscenter.org