 Featuring Jenny McMaster’s wonderful maps of handmade paper embellished with embroidery and Noelle Hamlyn’s haunting three-dimensional paper “clothes,” Rewind managed to give the visitor a visual history of the Mississippi during town’s settlement and industrial development as the mills reached their peak, while at the same time evoking a haunting feeling of the spirits of workers lingering in the buildings.
Both artists gave an engrossing talk about the development of the exhibit and their approaches to their art that was enjoyed by about 25 attendees.
The current exhibition was developed by our own curator, with help from our new intern Ryan Milton, and features photos of some of the workers interviewed for the video documentary, “Mill Workers’ Memories” that plays at one side of the gallery and features stories from the final stages of the textile industry in the Mississippi Valley in the mid-twentieth century, as told by the people who actually lived them. Many of the jobs in the mills are described in the exhibit, such as bobbin boy and twister, and artifacts from the MVTM collection are also on display. Copies of the video are for sale in our gift shop, and if you haven’t purchased one yet, make sure you do. The stories are a wonderful glimpse into Almonte’s recent past.  “Portrait of a Mill Worker” runs until March 17 | 
