Artist Jeff Champman-Crane has been a member of KFTC for 22 years and counting.  Throughout his involvment with the organization, Jeff has often combined his talents with his activism, including creating the artwork for KFTC's 1988 "Save The Homeplace" campaign that successfully saw an end to the use of Broad Form Deeds in Kentucky.

As a resident of Eastern Kentucky, Jeff knows intimately the damage done by mountaintop removal and has worked to help protect the place he calls home.  In 2006, Jeff was part of a  group organized by KFTC that successfully prevented a valley fill permited in his community of Eolia. 

-Jeff Chapman-Crane, Letcher County

In 2004, Jeff debuted The Agony of Gaia at KFTC's Annual Meeting.  Unlike most of his work, which is two-dimensional, this piece is a life-sized, figurative sculpture that depicts Mother Earth suffering the abuse of strip-mining.  Created in response to the devastation brought about by such mining practices as mountaintop removal and valley fills, the sculpture took over 1500 hours to complete, spanning over 16 years in its creation.

The sculpture depicts a woman lying on her side in fetal position, her face covered by hands drawn tight in pain and agony.  Her head rests on a moss-covered rock, and her upper body is cloaked with foliage and trees.  The tears dripping from her eyes form a mountain stream flowing beneath her.   Behind her is a painted panel, permanently attached as a backdrop, depicting distant mountains and a sky gradually changing from clear to very stormy and threatening.
 
Much of her lower body has been stripped of its natural covering, and the bedrock on which she lies has been blasted away, leaving high-walls and mounds of rubble.  A fleet of heavy earth-moving machinery is at work exposing coal seams that, when completely mined out, will level the entire mountain, which in essence is Mother Earth.

 
The head and the hands of the figure are carved in clay, fired to achieve a stone-like hardness.  The rest of the sculptural form is constructed of rigid Styrofoam sheets, which the artist chose because they are strong, lightweight, and easily carved.  Extremely realistic in their detail, surface textures were achieved by attaching all natural materials, including moss, sand, rock dust and twigs.  

The dozers, excavators, and other mining equipment are very detailed 1/87 scale reproductions of Caterpillar and other brand name machinery, weathered by the artist to lend an “on-the-job” look.   The effect is so realistic that close-up photographs of the mining activities are hard to distinguish from those of actual mining operations.

-Mary Dan Easley, Jefferson County

Jeff and Gaia has traveled throughout Kentucky in order to educate others about the horrors of mountaintop removal.  Gaia has been exhibited in a number of venues, including in the capitol building  in Frankfort as part of KFTC's I Love Mountains Day.  For information about displaying the sculpture contact Jeff Chapman-Crane at:  chapmancrane[at]peoplepc[dot]com.

Cry of the Unreclaimed                                                      

Only the clarion cry of woodland bird the trickling song of mountain stream should fill the silence here       

Stately oaks should crown this noble queen.

Here sleek fox and graceful doe  should raise their young            squirrel and chipmunk find a home

Only the dance of dying leaf
the burgeoning thrust of budding tree should mark time’s passage here.

But no.
Lust would never have it so.

The deadly drone of diesel engine, steel machines to cut and slash,  assail this fertile mother land leave behind no unturned stone.

Stripped to the bone and ripped apart she grieves, her heart is left to die alone.

Only the flesh of fallen trees, the bone-gray mounds of broken stones, only the stagnant blood of mud-choked mountain streams to tell the tale remain.

But know.
Her seeds are left for us to sow.
The earth lies unreclaimed.

                    Jeff Chapman-Crane
                         February 22, 1986