Growing up in Moundsville WV, most of the women that I knew worked in factories.  They worked on assembly lines alongside men at the Fostoria Glass, the US Stamping, and the Louis Marx Toy Factory.   These women worked eight-hour days in the factories and went home to keep a clean house, tend a garden, do a favor for a neighbor, wash clothes, cook meals, and raise a family.  During my college years one of the most valuable lessons that I learned was learned during the summers.  I worked in the Louis Marx toy factory alongside these women – my neighbors, my aunt, my mother, and my grandmother.   The values and work ethics that I learned from these women have served me well.  I believe that anyone fortunate enough to know them benefited. They were an important defining thread in the culture of the town.

The figure is of a middle-aged woman waiting to leave the factory and go home.  She carries a bag that contained her lunch and purse or an item shared with her fellow workers.  The other hand holds a time book.  Her gaze is beyond the factory with thoughts of the jobs and joys of home. [Read More]

I have always found a strength in remembering those people who became adults during the depression and who were happy to have a job regardless of how humble.  How they co-operated on an assembly line.  How they shared their creativity in ways to make do. How they shared the joys of making the best of what little they had.   How if you just kept working things would always get better.  I hope that this sculpture might remind people of those values and the stories of who she is and why she is here to enrich future generations of this special hometown.