PLMeriam Artist

This gets posted in my studio: to think of ourselves as nature, with the power to create or destroy, is a useful life guiding analogy.

Dear Friends and Fellow Humans, I turn 70 today. For 7 decades I’ve had the privilege of living out my childhood dream, which was simply to UNDERSTAND. After spending more than half a century meeting people from all over the world willing to tell me their stories, I have found meaning, purpose and hope through advocating for their voices with music. I am deeply grateful to them all. But today, I am worried. In the year 2100, my youngest grandchild will be 76. She will be meeting a world I will not see. I wonder what the world will be like then? And what can we all do now to ensure that today’s children can live with hope, purpose and meaning? I try to remember that WE ARE NATURE. Embedded within nature, and in us, are the seeds of incredible creativity and terrifying destructiveness. My deepest birthday wish is that all of us humans become constantly aware of these opposing forces within us, and that we actively choose to create rather than destroy. Only then can we be free to imagine, invent and construct a new way of living together. Only then can we live in equilibrium with one another and with our planet, include all the wisdom of the ages, allow awe and wonder to be a part of our lives, and most of all, treat every human being with dignity: a PLANETARY HUMANISM. With love & affection, Yo-Yo

Get back to the fundamentals.

Back to basics. Part 3.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 1 of 10, Patty Meriam, Barre, VT

One Coin At A Time, 2025
Metal gumball machine, plastic capsules, wood, paper transfer, plexiglass
10” x 10” x 32”

One Coin At a Time confronts the cost of child labor on the development of children: draining them of their future potential and that of their community's progress. Rather than delivering a joyful toy, each 25 cent turn of the dial in the toy capsule vending machine, delivers information about child labor in the US and world supply chains, or details what youthful experiences children are missing when they work.

All quarters collected will be donated to the Child Labor Coalition.

Context of One Coin At A Time

The US government, under President Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt, recognized the societal damage of child labor when they passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. This act created the eight hour work day, the 40 hour work week, four hours of overtime pay a day, and put restrictions on child labor. Those child restrictions included a requirement to be 18 for certain dangerous jobs, at least 16 to work in mining or manufacturing, and no one under 16 can work during school hours. The Federal minimum wage is currently at $7.25 regardless of age. Many states, including Vermont, at $14.01, require a higher standard wage. The FLSA ended child labor in the granite industry and most manufacturing in the US.

This act only applies to the US. Other countries have their own labor laws with Denmark, Norway and Ireland ranking the highest for child protection. China, Sudan, and Iran rank at the bottom. Many countries, including watch dog agencies in the US, monitor child labor in supply chains. Copper, cobalt, cocoa, to***co, and textiles are amongst products that currently use child labor.

Unfortunately, between 2016-2024 US labor rights have declined by 22%.* The US Dept of Labor reports that child labor violations are on the rise. Child labor is cheap which benefits employers. Trump’s Project 2025 states “Congress should pass legislation allowing waivers from federal labor laws like the NLRA and FLSA under certain conditions”(p.605), which seeks legislation to allow waivers for state and local governments from the US labor standards.

Some states are already preparing for such waivers:
Wyoming is ready to lower the age for child workers to 14 years, increase hours to 8 on a school day, and set a minimum wage at $5.15**
Maine Republicans, in February 2023, introduced Legislative Document (LD) 644 in the legislature to repeal hourly work limits for 16 and 17 year olds. The bill was defeated in May 2025. At least eight other states are preparing to reduce child labor restrictions and minimum pay: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Missouri

*April 29, 2024 report of the World Justice Project
**Trumps’ Project 2025 would let states bypass laws protecting children from harmful working conditions, EPI, August 26, 2024, Nina Mast

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 2 of 10, Jamie Zimchek, Florida

Jamie Zimchek

When the Dust Settles, 2025
Screen prints, paper hats
7’6” h x 6’ w

In When the Dust Settles, Zimchek considers the lineage of stone-carving labor over the years with an installation of paper hats made from screenprinted newsheets. These prints, which also form the backdrop for the hats, draw text from publications associated with Barre’s granite industry, including granite-related magazines from the 1940s and 50s, and a book on the region’s geology dating back to the 1920s, more than a decade after Barre’s first quarries opened. Stone carvers wore these paper hats, a design with roots stretching as far back as early Industrialized Europe, as they labored in the dusty confines of buildings like this one. In this work, the hats, like the laborers over time, almost disappear into the progression of news and world narratives, their names and faces fading into the background. Though many may have been subsumed by the vagaries of time, forgotten by all but friends and family, their stone handiworks survive the centuries, reminders of the laborers of long ago.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 3 of 10, Jessie Keating, Tacoma, WA

We Want Our Bread and Roses, 2025
Acrylic on Unstretched Canvas
6’ x 3’

"The children themselves were an object lesson as to the meaning of these great upheavals in the labor world…I could not help but think that, as I looked over these wan and pinched faces, some day in the near future these same children will march to the ballot box and forever free themselves and their children from a system that drove them from their parents and homes." --The Barre Daily Times, VT. February 24, 1912

On February 17, 1912, as part of the "Children's Exodus," 35 children of striking immigrant workers were sent to Barre, Vermont, to lessen the burden on their families in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The children were met with three brass bands and a large crowd, and taken into the homes of sympathizers of their parents' labor strike. Barre's support of the strike and the children's visit further cemented the town's reputation as a center of labor activism and a place of strong community ties. We Want Our Bread and Roses celebrates the lasting legacy of the Italian immigrants' sacrifices to feed, clothe, and house 35 children in solidarity with their Lawrence, Massachusetts labor union counterparts.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 4 of 10, Mandy Yourick, Florida

All Together Now, 2025
Letterpress on giclee prints of Rock of Ages Quarry
16” x 24”

All Together Now draws a parallel between the physical demands of printmaking and those of the granite workers in Barre, where human labor meets stone over time. Just as sculptors shape rock through patient repetition, prints emerge from repetitive motion, intentional placement, and embodied skill. These letterpress prints are printed with vintage wood type on giclee prints of the Rock of Ages quarry- merging image and text to reflect on labor, language, and the shared human impulse to shape and communicate.
Rooted in the labor-intensive technique of letterpress, All Together Now celebrates the egalitarian history of print as a medium that has historically been used to organize people, disseminate ideas, and ignite social movements. A once-primary means of sharing information, letterpress appears obsolete, its time-consuming process often dismissed as impractical. Yet in its slowness lies power: a tactile language of protest, precision, and care. This series honors that history while connecting it to the present, encouraging viewers to reconsider the value of slow methods in fast times.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 5 of 10, Marian Lyndgaard, Minnesota

Labor Deconstructed, Series 1-9, 2025
Vintage fabric, historical image, acrylic gel medium, embroidery floss
8”x 8”

The mixed media artworks incorporate domestic materials such as heirloom textiles, personal archival photography, and photography from the Vermont Granite Museum archives. These materials evoke the repetitive, emotional, and bodily work of caregiving. The imagery juxtaposes the unseen domestic labor done by women that supports men working in the industrial role. This contrast creates a dialogue between the labor of home and the structures that often render it invisible.

This work views motherhood not only as a biological or emotional role, but as a site of ongoing labor—both physical and emotional, visible and hidden. Drawing from Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born, this exhibition confronts the tension between motherhood as lived experience and motherhood as a system structured by patriarchy. It questions: What does it mean to work within the private sphere? What happens when we redefine that work as both essential and revolutionary? Labor here is not romanticized but reclaimed as a powerful, creative force that carries both political and personal weight.

By foregrounding labor as the central lens, the work contributes to a broader cultural dialogue around feminism, equity, and the politics of care. It offers space for reflection, recognition, and redefinition of the everyday acts that shape our collective survival.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 6 of 10, Naomi Even-Aberle, Texas

Body and Breath of Labor, 2025
Cement, Archival Photographs, Encaustic Wax, Soundtrack "Invisible Labor"
5' x 4' x 5"

Body & Breath of Labor is a site-specific sculptural installation that grounds the histories of immigrant quarry workers in Barre, Vermont, through stone, image, and sound. The work consists of fifteen hand-chiseled granite slabs, each embedded with either an archival photograph or a present-day image of laborers engaged in different stages of granite work—from initial quarry extraction to final surface finishing.
The photographs, sourced from historical archives and contemporary documentation, are encased in layers of encaustic, their translucent surfaces evoking the gradual opacity and lung scarring caused by Mica Pneumoconiosis, as described in historical and modern accounts of quarry workers. The tactile process of chiseling the slabs mirrors the physical exertion and time-intensive craft central to granite labor, while the encaustic surfaces preserve and obscure the figures—reflecting both memory and erasure over time.
The installation is accompanied by the “invisible labor memory” soundtrack: a layered composition of ambient field recordings from active quarries, machine workshops, and public archives, interwoven with voice-overs from workers, historians, and artisans. Together, the visual and sonic components immerse viewers in a sensory narrative of granite’s human history, making tangible the endurance, skill, and health costs embedded in the material itself.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 8 of 10, Sarah Brown, Plattsburgh, NY

The Veil of Heartache, 2025
Assemblage of site-specific photos printed on sheer fabric, Barre granite, wood.
Approximately 7’h x 6’w (three wooden busts in front of fabric prints)

The Veil of Heartache reveals the other side of the hard-working labor of the men at VGM from the 1800s to the mid-1900s, the women, the brides, and future widows. Dying carvers/workers often left behind their families to provide for themselves in a time when women did not have the rights that they do today. With dangerous working conditions in the granite industry, women married for love - or had a lover who could succumb to illness and injury. Illnesses such as silicosis and mishaps with large machinery were largely to blame. Siliceous was usually labeled TB so as not to alarm the granite workers about the dangers of the silica they inhaled while carving stones of sandstone and granite—a veil of secrecy of sorts surrounding the factory's dangers. Due to the high prevalence of death, in 1937, Vermont passed a law to improve working conditions for the granite workers.
While visiting the Hope Cemetery, the amount of dedication and love exhibited on the rolling hills demands pause. The creatively designed and individualized memorials represent the diverse talent, love, and awareness of loss within the granite families.
Exploring the Millstone hiking area–where water reflecting off the hard stones taken from the earth suggests the numerous tears shed from loss during the process of creating beauty in order to memorialize death–was breathtaking. Using photographs from the cemetery and surrounding quarries, printing them on delicate veil like fabric, and arranging them with home life objects, starts to carve away another side of the story. Before you, uniquely shows the beauty of love, the delicacy of life, the hardness of stone, and the endless beauty of domesticity and nature. This work is intended to acknowledge and honor the women who have endured under the veil of heartache.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 9 of 10, Shannon Cleere, of Washington State.

An Té a Choimeádann an Tine, Coimeádann Sé an Teach [English translation from Irish: Who Keeps the Fire, Keeps the House], 2025
Screen printed tea towels, stone dust
Series of eight, each 26” x 17”

Proverbs left to right: Italian, Irish, Scottish, Polish, Czech, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian.

Across cultures, proverbs function to persuade, teach morals, and reinforce identity. They also reflect the values, social norms, and power dynamics of their time, often preserving assumptions that feel outdated. Who Keeps the Fire, Keeps the House is a series of tea towels printed with proverbs exalting the value of hard work. Each represents one of the numerous immigrant groups that came to Barre to work in the granite industry starting in the late 19th century. Within a few years, many immigrant men brought wives, children, and relatives from their home countries. By the early 20th century, Barre had thriving ethnic neighborhoods with households, businesses, and places of worship. It was the arrival of women and children that transformed Barre from a transient labor camp into a permanent immigrant community. While the skill, commitment, and hard work of these granite workers are undeniable, they depended on a network of support. Women sustained households through invisible labor; they worked in local businesses and volunteered. Their contributions enabled men to work in the quarries or in the plant. These tea towels, dirtied with stone dust, are an ode to these women and their contributions to Barre’s rich granite history.

"Fracture Point", an exhibit at the Vermont Granite Museum, September 7-November 1, 2025. Exhibitors: 10 of 10, Susan Snipes of Cleveland, OH "Uncertain Futures", 2025

Uncertain Futures considers the fates of skilled workers under the advance of artificial intelligence. Each portrait reflects the uneven and scattershot reach of AI. Some fields are impacted heavily, others less so. Craft, skill, and lived experience have been destabilized as identities built over years of labor come under threat. What remains of these identities in the shadow of AI?

References

Telemarketers and call centers are anticipated to be fully replaced by AI and automation.1 Nursing is now and will likely increasingly be augmented by AI.2 Stone carvers, artisans, and skilled trades are among laborers least likely to be replaced by AI. 3

Forbes (December 2024) reports that AI is already handling 70-80% of customer service interactions. While human agents remain for complex cases, AI is rapidly expanding its role in routine support.
McKinsey & American Nurses Foundation Survey (October 2024) suggests that AI could free up approximately 20% of a nurse’s shift by automating administrative tasks. OJIN Nursing Journal concludes that AI should be viewed as "augmented intelligence" to support nurses rather than replace them.
Forbes (August 2025) emphasizes that skilled trades are more resilient than white-collar jobs in the age of AI, emerging as some of the most recession-proof and irreplaceable careers in the modern economy.

Uncertain Futures considers the fates of skilled workers under the advance of artificial intelligence. Each portrait reflects the uneven and scattershot reach of AI. Some fields are impacted heavily, others less so. Craft, skill, and lived experience have been destabilized as identities built over years of labor come under threat. What remains of these identities in the shadow of AI?

References

Telemarketers and call centers are anticipated to be fully replaced by AI and automation.1 Nursing is now and will likely increasingly be augmented by AI.2 Stone carvers, artisans, and skilled trades are among laborers least likely to be replaced by AI. 3

Forbes (December 2024) reports that AI is already handling 70-80% of customer service interactions. While human agents remain for complex cases, AI is rapidly expanding its role in routine support.
McKinsey & American Nurses Foundation Survey (October 2024) suggests that AI could free up approximately 20% of a nurse’s shift by automating administrative tasks. OJIN Nursing Journal concludes that AI should be viewed as "augmented intelligence" to support nurses rather than replace them.
Forbes (August 2025) emphasizes that skilled trades are more resilient than white-collar jobs in the age of AI, emerging as some of the most recession-proof and irreplaceable careers in the modern economy.