Scars of the anthracite: A critical study of the sculpture, painting, and drawing of anthracite miners of northeastern Pennsylvania, 1830--1930, and its implications for art education.

摘要

Northeastern Pennsylvania is comprised of people from many cultural and national backgrounds. Since its founding in 1681, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been among the states with the greatest diversity of population, and today its population consists of people from over one hundred ethnic groups. While Pennsylvanians share a common regional and political identity, they also form a mixture of national and ethnic cultures and religious traditions.; This thesis will examine the lives and works of these diverse people who worked the anthracite mines, focusing on their art and its relevance to art education. The occupation of anthracite coal mining dominated this area for more than a century and formed a distinct culture. The art of anthracite miners offers a unique glimpse of work in and around the coal mines, from an era when workers labored underground with pick and shovel to the surface mining operations of today.; The heritage of the anthracite region is forever etched, carved, and painted in the artwork of these coal miners. In this thesis, I will explore the story of immigration and industry in the anthracite region, and apply it to art education today in lessons for the classroom.; Through the miners' art, we can experience the lives and labors of those who settled in the upper Appalachian mountain range within northeastern Pennsylvania. Their forms of communication, understanding, and problem-solving will be researched and documented in this work.