In front of a concrete retaining wall in Whitesburg, Kentucky, amidst piles of broken pottery and glass, Lacy Hale sifted through a plastic bag full of jewelry.
“A woman donated this,” Hale said. “It was a box full of buttons and pendants and little gems and stones and doodads of all sorts.”
Hale selected several pieces from the bag. She held each one up to a turtle-shaped outline that had been painted on the wall. She was trying to decide which jewelry parts would work to make the turtle in this mosaic come to life.
“It’s like putting a puzzle together all the time,” Hale said. “You gotta find the exact piece that’s broken the right way to fit next to another piece. And then you have to think about the color scheme of the pieces.”
At her work station in front of the mosaic, Lacy Hale has a reference photo of a box turtle on her phone to help her decide which jewelry pieces to use to create the turtle. (Photo by Mimi Pickering/Appalshop)
Hale is an artist from Whitesburg. She has been spearheading the creation of this public mosaic that is located behind the old post office downtown. The mosaic is sponsored by the Cowan Community Action Group in Letcher County, where Whitesburg is the county seat. It is part of their annual Growing Home event which honors the anniversary of the flood of 2022.
“They wanted [the mosaic] to commemorate the flood,” Hale said. “But also honor the people here—the grit, the strength.”
This month marks the four year anniversary of the 2022 flood that devastated parts of southeast Kentucky. In Letcher County, the memory of the flood still cuts deep. It was one of the hardest hit counties, where residents experienced widespread damage and even loss of life.
Lacy Hale (left) and Julian Holt (right) take a break from grouting the mosaic. Holt is a painter and printmaker from Letcher County, Kentucky, and is currently a student at Eastern Kentucky University. They were Hale’s intern for the mosaic project. (Photo by Nik Lee/Appalshop)
In addition to commemorating the flood, the mosaic is a celebration of eastern Kentucky’s streams, along with the flora and fauna that call them home. It features plants like Joe Pye weed, black-eyed Susans, ghost pipe, and morels, and animals such as kingfishers, a heron, and dragonflies.
“A little bit of all kinds of things that make this area really lovely,” Hale said.
Hale is no stranger to making public art. She has painted around 20 murals in the region. But this was her first time working in mosaic. So she taught herself the basics, relying on YouTube.
“As I was doing research, I realized, ‘Oh, you can use rocks, you can use jewelry, you can use broken ceramics.’”
This research sparked an idea. It reminded her of a mug that belonged to her father. When he passed away in 2008, Hale was given the mug.
“I got that mug, and I used that mug, and then I broke that mug. So I couldn’t bring myself to part with the mug.”
So, she decided to put it in the mosaic.
“From that it kind of grew into, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to ask people in the community to bring their own broken treasures.’”
Hale put the word out on social media, and soon all kinds of people were bringing items to add to the mosaic. People have donated old jewelry, broken pottery that belonged to loved ones, and river glass found after flooding. Not only have people donated physical items, they’ve shared their stories, too.
Broken pottery and glass are sorted by color to help Lacy Hale and her interns decide how to make the flora and fauna in the mosaic come to life. (Photo by Mimi Pickering/Appalshop)
“It’s been a way for me, too, to learn about people in the community that I might not have been able to meet before,” Hale said.
One person Hale has connected with through the project is Lee Burke. Burke lives in McRoberts, Kentucky alongside a creek. The night of the flood, he was staying next door with his mom. During the night, Burke heard his mom call out.
“She said, ‘Lee, you better check that creek.’ And I said, ‘It’s a creek, it ain’t goin nowhere.’ And I just laid there,” Burke said. “It wasn’t about five minutes, and it was still raining. [My mom] said, ‘I’m telling you, you better check that creek.’ So I got up and looked, and when I looked out that window, it was already a raging river.”
As Burke stood with his mom at the back door, he saw his dad’s outbuilding float down the rushing creek.
“It was a big, almost two-story…huge rough lumber building,” Burke said. “And it had the 100 crates in it and all the pop bottles.”
Burke’s dad was an avid collector of all things RC Cola. There used to be an RC bottling plant several miles down the road. When Burke’s dad was a kid, a cold bottle of RC was a big treat. Over the years, he collected around 100 wooden crates and thousands of glass bottles. That lumber building is where he stored it all.
“He passed away in 2012 and I just kept it all,” Burke said. “I would just open the door sometimes, kind of look in at it, and just shut it back. And I just never could do nothing with it.”
Lee Burke stands outside his home in McRoberts, Kentucky. Every year on the anniversary of the 2022 flood, Burke gives away RC Cola and Moon Pies to passersby. It’s a way of bringing joy to neighbors on an otherwise somber day. And it’s a way for Burke to remember his now-deceased father, who was a big fan of RC and Moon Pies. (Photo by Mimi Pickering/Appalshop)
Burke watched as all of those keepsakes were swept downriver with the building. In the days after the flood waters had subsided, Burke and his brother were driving to the next town over, when something in a debris pile caught Burke’s eye. He told his brother to pull the car over.
“And he said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I know that’s dad’s RC crate,’’ Burke said. “So we got out, we went across the creek, we dug through all that stuff, and sure enough, it was a red RC crate. And it was still intact.”
And so began the hunt for any remaining RC crates and bottles. They started finding them near bridges and in debris piles.
“And then a lot of people started hearing about me looking for them,” Burke said. “So they started finding them. And they would message, like, ‘Hey, I’ve got you this RC crate.’ Or sometimes I would come home, and then they’d just be sitting on the porch.”
Out of the more than 2000 bottles in his dad’s building, Burke only recovered two. One was fully intact. The other was broken in half, but still had the RC logo. When he saw Hale’s post about the mosaic, he decided to donate the broken bottle.
“She was able to actually somehow cut the RC with the glass perfectly and put it into the mosaic,” Burke said.
“It makes me kind of want to cry now,” Hale said. “It was just so touching that a piece from his father…he would trust us to use and break and put in this big wall.”
Hale and her intern, Julian Holt, wanted to make sure the bottle stood out in the mosaic.
“We were like, ‘We need to put it in a very prominent place,’” Hale said. “My intern Julian was like, ‘We should put it in the blue heron’s neck.’ And so that’s what we did.”
The RC Cola bottle that belonged to Lee Burke’s father now has a prominent place in this new mosaic in downtown Whitesburg, Kentucky. (Photo by Mimi Pickering/Appalshop)
Burke also donated a mug of his mother’s, who passed away in 2024. For him, having his parents’ objects in this public artwork is a way of honoring their lives.
“They’re both gone, and it’s just a little bit of keeping them alive,” Burke said.
Back at the mosaic, Hale worked to put the finishing touches on the turtle. She sifted through a pile of orange pottery shards, searching for the right color.
“Painting with glass is a little different,” Hale said. “So you have to think a little more deliberately about the color changes, and the highlights and the shadows.”
Hale found a piece that was the right color, but it was too big. She broke the shard into smaller pieces with a hammer. Next, she used a putty knife to scrape a blob of white adhesive onto the back of a piece. Then, she placed it on the wall, shaping the turtle’s head.
The mosaic was commissioned by Cowan Community Action Group in Letcher County. It is part of their annual Growing Home event which honors the anniversary of the flood of 2022. (Photo by Mimi Pickering/Appalshop)
“It’s just an honor that they trust me with the pieces that they bring,” Hale said. “And I hope I do them all justice.”
The mosaic is like an archive of the community, said Hale. It’s a reflection of what they found important and beautiful.
This article is part of the Living Traditions project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia.
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The post A New Public Mosaic in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Commemorates the Flood of 2022 While Serving as a Community Archive appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
