When we hear the phrase “working landcape,” we’re accustomed to think of hayfields and woodlots – the pastoral Vermont. But artist and architect Tom Leytham sees another working landscape, one that he says is “hiding in plain sight.”
That’s the industrial landscape of the rural Northeast – the mills, mines, quarries and factories that once made New England go - but are now crumbling into vacant hulks.
Even though these abandoned bits of the “other working landscape” are fast becoming dilapidated relics in our new, post-industrial world, Leytham sees deep significance, and a harsh beauty in their ragged contours.
He has captured and interpreted that overlooked landscape in a show of watercolor prints on display through September at the Governor’s Office on the fifth floor of the Pavilion Office Building in Montpelier.
What his paintings show is a rugged world that has been bypassed by our fast-moving, fast-changing society. Grain mills and factories that used to make bullrakes, mines that once produced copper or asbestos, abandoned lumberyards and grain elevators – all places that once made things and employed Vermonters -- are depicted in all their tumbledown glory.
That these relics sometimes caused horrific industrial pollution doesn’t detract from their beauty as found landscapes. And if you look with new eyes it’s not hard to see that. Tom Leytham has looked, and painted what he has seen there.
He has a special affection for the Swayze Mill, part of an historic district in Tunbridge, which he calls, “one of the most unique vernacular buildings in Vermont. He has painted it several times, from different angles, showing how it grew from an early grist mill to later include a sawmill and a woodshop – all in the same building.
His lines are crisp, with an architect’s appreciation for detail and texture. But he omits some areas, letting the white of the paper show through, which brings our attention back to the picture plane and reminds us that this is considerably more than an architect’s rendering.
His view of the Swayze Mill's shadowy turbine pit, with its sensitive rendering of the various textures of the old mill’s guts, brilliantly evokes an older working Vermont.
Leytham sees these ancient, often decaying buildings as symbolic of the demise of New England’s industrial economy, but notes that they often also express bold enterprise, ingenious engineering, and craftsmanship. He has found and resurrected a near-forgotten part of our past.
No people are included in any of these scenes. But there are plenty of ghosts.
