Jane D'Alessandro
Artist's statement:
Not only can we learn from history, but we can also embrace it by repurposing physical, historical remnants from years gone by!
Long ago in Lackawanna County, when iron and steel were territorial 'kings' and the Scranton Family presided from their 'Estate,' wealthy businessmen and industrialists established their families in beautiful mansions, crowding Scranton's long, wide, tree lined streets. Inside these expansive homes, interior decorum reached high - all the way to the ceilings; tin tiles, offering pressed shapes and patterned designs, finished with white frosting made the lack of intrigue that common white paster offered easy to avoid; tin tiles were, in three words, ‘all the rage!’
Years go by, economies change, practicalities take hold and mansions are subdivided, modernized, or torn down. Yet sometimes parts of them can be discovered; here and there; beached at a yard sale because their function did not float upon the tides of transformation; with stories to tell, if they could only talk…
This tin tile was found lonely and crying, discarded and forgotten in a scrap pile near a demolition site in Scranton. In recognition of its survival, the times it endured, and the hopes of the people who once strolled underneath, it has been re-purposed and enhanced with oil paints to suggest a dreamy ‘Lilly by the River’ setting, somewhat exotic yet wholly representative in fashion and tone to the tastes of the wealthy regarding nature during the turn of the century in the United States.
All Images © 2025 Jane D'Alessandro