FROST
Poems by Melissa Whalen Haertsch, photographs by Michael Poster
November 5, 2021 – January 2, 2022
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov 5th, 2021 – 5 to 8pm
Frost is a collection of poems by Melissa Whalen Haertsch and pictures by Michael Poster.
These long-time collaborators began Frost the year before the pandemic, drawn by the magnetic pull of the lives of older women living in personal care homes in Brattleboro, a study informed as always by the time Poster and Whalen Haertsch spend in their respective gardens. Soon the introspective, retrospective, forward-looking nature of the inquiry became the whole world’s personal experience as the pandemic forced everyone into smaller spheres of daily life, with the attendant drawbacks but also unexpected benefits. Frost is a collective portrait of life in love with the world, a love made sharper by mortality.
About Melissa Whalen Haertsch
I grew up in the mountains in Pennsylvania, spending a lot of time in the woods and garden, and also with my mother’s family, which contained many women. As a small child I understood that if you could not locate your own mother’s legs at a family gathering, any aunt’s legs would also do. (Sadly, my grandmothers were already gone.) I’ve always had women friends considerably older and younger than me, and looked to the older ones for the way forward through motherhood, marriage, and post-childrearing life.
Frost came as a welcome opportunity to examine the rich intellectual, emotional, spiritual world of this collection of very interesting, generous women, first as I was adjusting to being the only person in my house, and then later as the pandemic settled in and the whole world was adjusting to life in a smaller sphere. Many people found that that life had unexpected benefits, a truth that our Frost ladies already knew.
In addition to collaborating with Michael Poster on collections of pictures and writings, I also write poetry (big shout out to haiku) and creative non-fiction, and am currently trying to understand how to write short fiction. My aesthetic totem is the black branch of the cherry tree with just a few blossoms scattered on its twigs, and my target writing formula is 50% good field work and 50% miracle.
About Michael Poster
I grew up in Philadelphia. During high school, I became a heroin addict, a drug dealer, and an artist. After beginning the process of recovery, I worked as a mechanic, then a house builder, a cabinetmaker, a photographer, and a group meeting facilitator in a recovery center.
Since 1999, I’ve completed photographic projects about diverse groups of people. The first was a six year series about the people of Scranton, Pennsylvania and after that, “sweetheart like you” about a women’s roller derby league. Since then, the writer Melissa Whalen Haertsch and I have collaborated on projects about factory work, a community torn apart by natural gas development, a group of circus performers learning new skills, and the seasons of work in an apple orchard. In 2015 I began the series “If she has a pulse, she has a chance” that deals with people in recovery from substance use disorder. Most recently, Melissa and I completed a project called “Frost” about women nearing the end of their lives.
I photograph and write about people: who they are, how they live, and how they change.