The Unknown Soldier On 

The lives of mill workers - the sentence alone could put my TV generation to sleep. Mill workers are so not Paris Hilton. Paris is famous for being famous. Mill workers are anonymous for being ignored. These citizens are granted counterculture status for no greater reason than their silence in a high volume world. As far as our consumer culture is concerned, our clothes were never made; they magically appeared at the mall for us to buy and wear. Who would have ever guessed there's an army of souls behind the making of these pants, this shirt, this pair of socks? Who would ever care? Phil Moody cares. Moody is a soft-spoken Scotsman living in the rural outskirts of Rock Hill, SC. He's a photographer and artist who has developed an interest in the life around him, in particular an interest in the work lives which blossomed, and now fade, in mill towns in North and South Carolina. As the last mills close around him, he has documented the end of a way of life which once dominated the Piedmont and survived for more than a century.

"I got to know these people personally, when the Bleachery (in Rock Hill) closed. Springs Industries let us come in and document the closing in the last two months. There were 13 mills originally — there are none now. I was touched to see skilled people with no place to go. What do these people do now?" Moody knits his brow and looks into his teacup.

Moody cares about these people. In his show Textile Towns, opening Friday at The Light Factory at Spirit Square, Moody chronicles stories of family, hope, faith and work. His art makes us listen — not because these lives are so difficult or sad, or because we feel sorry for this dissolving tribe, but because his work is beautiful and the images are moving. He has created a riveting homage to his adopted neighbors — a working class congregation long ago assembled by the arranged marriage of industry and economic necessity. Moody's stunning use of his media — color, light, photography and assemblage — is enthralling. Perhaps we can walk away with a bit of his message.

All of Moody's photographic panels are large — 80" x 80". Each is assembled with 20 16" x 20" photographs seamlessly mended together at the edges. Each piece resembles a shiny quilt, a visual metaphor acknowledging the closeness of the community and the industry which supported it. There are 20 assembled panels here at The Light Factory. Moody reveals the extraordinary in ordinary lives.

"Generations" chronicles three generations of the Brakefield clan of Rock Hill. Centered on each powder blue, grey and white panel are photographs from three generations of Brakefields, each photo tinted a different color. The photos are standard family fare: high school graduation, a studio family portrait and candid shots of family events — in the backyard, across the kitchen table, at the carnival. The oldest photo looks to be from the 1930s, the old man in overalls, a shirtless kid and slumped wife standing around the Bonnie and Clyde-era car. Moody's text is printed on the work and reveals a piece of this family:

"Most began the third (shift) and were eventually promoted to second. It sometimes took decades to get in to first. Family members often worked different shifts in the same mill — it was the accepted way of life. As Eddie was clocking out at Gate #2, he was told by those coming in that his father, who had raised eight children on the wages earned in the agers and soapers department, had died of a heart attack while leaving home for second shift."

All of these works are embossed with words running down the center swath of vertical panels. The words are Moody's — they are descriptions which set the images in context, which give us a sense of the human life behind the art. The words infuse a hardness into the varnished beauty of the image; the gleaming, gilded façade pulls you in the door, the words tell you who's inside.

"Bleachery Christmas Party" is a checkerboard of orange, red and white rectangles imbedded with green tinted photographs of the Christmas party. At the mill. Silhouetted ghost images appear on the paper, in this case toys — guns, soldiers, balloons and dolls.

For 25 years, through the 40s and 50 and into the early 60s, Christmas parties were celebrated outside the factory in a common grassy area the size of a football field. The area was cut into sections with temporary chicken wire fences separating gifts for children of different ages, gender and race. All community children came to receive gifts handed out by employees. The text reads: "The Bleachery Christmas Party was the mill's gift to Rock Hill. Each bag of cheap toys entered into the hearts of children to become the memories of adults."

Moody's work is part of a renaissance of interest in regional textile history and "cotton mill culture," encompassing numerous conferences, hundreds of oral history projects, a thriving Textile Heritage Center in Cooleemee, NC, and an upcoming Textile Heritage weekend in Kannapolis in late April. Adding to this renaissance, and hand in hand with Moody's work, the Charlotte Symphony commissioned veteran Charlotte composer David Crowe to write a chamber ensemble piece revolving around cotton mill life. Crowe immersed himself in the stories of mill life through a series of meetings and oral history sessions organized by the Symphony, and will premiere the chamber piece on Sunday, April 10, at The Light Factory. The new interest in mill culture has come too late to save much of its remnants, and Moody's work reflects that reality.

For instance, 65 mill houses were offered to the Lowell and McAdenville fire departments for training with controlled burns. A new development was planned. In Moody's piece titled "McAdenville," glossy black photo paper floats above a background surface pulsing the color of fire and bright red blood. Centered on each black panel is a photograph of parts of the homes — a formica countertop, a kitchen table, overgrown bushes climbing siding, an inflatable pool in a dirt yard, a single window in an empty room. The homes are not merely vacant, they're abandoned — soulless hulls begging to be burned. The text reads down the center of the piece:

"And no more giggling,

Or shrieking,

Or snuggling or sleeping,

No more whispering,

Birthing, or loving or nursing.

And no more planting,

Or weeding, canning or steaming.

No laughing, bawling, kissing, or squabbling.

There'll be no phoning,

Confiding, cussing, or grieving.

Only remembering."

As I write some of Moody's prose poems, they sound a bit maudlin to my ear, unnecessarily sentimental. These same passages seen printed in large type down the glossy quilted surface are not maudlin. In the larger context, they mutate to higher form. Surrounded by the images, the works become imbedded in the narrative and are chemically exempted from the slight of my sardonic mind. Empathy trumps parody — the wail of a lost child can't be mocked.

In 1941, photographer Walker Evans and writer James Agee produced a book chronicling the lives of three migrant farm families in rural Alabama. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is full of brilliant and difficult prose, and, as one critic put it, it is not a novel and not journalism, but a puzzle which Agee could not piece together.

Moody's art also praises "famous" men (and women and children), and is neither a novel nor journalism, but a simple elegiac puzzle that fits together well. His work manages to spin whole cloth from fragments, to weave a palatable — even beautiful — fiction from a passel of cold hard fact.

"Sunset" is a tapestry of 20 blocks of color — magenta, cobalt blue, faded pink, almond and sand — imprinted with columns of obituaries from the Rock Hill area. Strewn across the surface of each colored panel are photograms of pieces of yarn, shadows of kinked cotton floating across the surface. Moody's prose tells a story: "Her last days came with a great disorientation. Falling into a state of almost childlike wandering her mind was incapable of keeping to the present. She took to carrying out her lifelong duties in the hubbub of the hospital ward. For 43 years she'd managed the mill finishing room, searching for small flaws in bolts of cloth about to be shipped. Now she continued by picking at threads in midair and by raising the nap on the long cloth which would soon shroud her for the final journey."

Moody gives a velvet tongue to a mute community. A tree has fallen and is vanishing in the forest and Moody whispers us the news. Let us now praise famous men. Moody, his work and the subjects of his work — the men and women and children of the evaporating textile industry — deserve praise. None is famous, nor ever will be, except perhaps, in the eyes of God. Paris Hilton understands that, but I do not.

The exhibit Textile Towns will be on display this Friday through May 12 in the Knight Gallery at The Light Factory at Spirit Square. An opening reception will be held 6-9pm Friday, with artist Phil Moody in attendance, along with composer David Crowe who will preview the chamber ensemble piece written specifically for this exhibit. For more information, call 704-333-9755, or go online to www.lightfactory.org.