Name: From the Same Soil: Collage, Oral History, and Place-Based Visual Literacy on Ohio’s Century Farms
Start: 2026-10-08T14:30:00-0400
End: 2026-10-08T15:30:00-0400

From the Same Soil: Collage, Oral History, and Place-Based Visual Literacy on Ohio’s Century Farms

Thursday October 8, 2026 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT

Studio

This campfire session shares one element of my larger on-going project documenting Ohio Century Farms — properties held by the same families for one hundred years or more — through oral history and digital collage. Century Farms represent endangered ways of seeing and inhabiting land amid converging threats: dwindling profit margins, generational crisis, and pressures from developers and data center corporations bringing environmental concerns including strain on local water supplies.
The session focuses on translating Alice Herrick's oral account from rural Metamora, Ohio into visual forms. During World War II, German and Italian POWs from the nearby Blissfield, Michigan camp were granted work release to labor alongside her family — Czech sugar beet farmers — in the fields. Despite profound cultural differences and wartime bitterness, shared labor produced mutual respect and genuine friendship. Tragedy deepened community bonds when a railroad accident killed POWs returning to barracks after their jeep stalled on tracks. Upon release, several prisoners became U.S. citizens and married local women — a remarkable arc from enemy combatant to neighbor.
I will share three to four original digital collages created from the Herrick family's photographs, recombining images of Alice's childhood, sugar beet harvest, and ceremonial life — including the Sugar Beet Queen — with historic land survey maps and contemporary views. Grounded in Aldo Leopold's ethic of attentive seeing, these compositions engage ACRL visual literacy competencies: interpreting images within contextual settings, critically evaluating visual sources, and creating meaningful media contributing to shared knowledge.
The second portion invites audience participation: What visual archives — family photographs, land records, vernacular objects — lie dormant in your communities? How can layered images make hidden histories visible? What ethical responsibilities accompany visualizing aging neighbors' stories? How might visual literacy practices serve communities facing loss of both land and stories?

Speakers

Ashley Pryor

Associate Professor, University of Toledo

Ashley Pryor (Geiger) is a collage artist and Associate Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies and Honors affiliated faculty at The University of Toledo. Her collage work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and appears in Kolaj Magazine, The Raw Art Review... Read More →

Thursday October 8, 2026 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Studio

Campfire

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Ashley Pryor

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