Pine Tree Ballads 2017

In the early 1900s, my great-grandfather settled on an island off the coast of Maine because it resembled his homeland of Sweden. As a result, my family has returned to Gray's Point each summer for over a century. Throughout his life, he shared exquisitely detailed accounts of the early settlers of the New England apple orchard farm that included such characters as a one-legged ship cook, a widowed schoolteacher, and an ingenious Native American blacksmith. The tales were an intricate mix of facts and lore that fueled my imagination and often had the power to transform floorboard creaks and shadows into enduring ancestral spirits. My decade long, 200 image plus, photographic opus “Pine Tree Ballads” is a poetic memoir that embraces

this spirit of magic realism.