Project Statement

by S. Schwartzenberg

"The project began in 1982 as a biography of William Maher's father Jim Maher, who was born in 1917 and grew up and raised his family in Hunter's Point. Jim was a cowboy, self-taught artist, slaughterhouse worker, husband and father; who, caught in the throes of World War II industrialization and its aftermath, fell victim to alcoholism and unemployment. Jim died of cancer in 1976. As we interviewed family members and friends who knew him, the project grew to become a portrait of the Maher family, many of their friends, and of Hunter's Point. It is an interpretive social document, a story of individuals and their attempts to cope with, and understand how history has changed them."

To Quiet a Foreign Pain (Jimmy a Real American)

Susan Schwartzenberg

Agents

Susan Schwartzenberg

type: initiating

role:
artist

William Cody Maher

type: initiating

role:
author

Visual Studies Workshop Press

type: initiating

role:
publisher
printer

Publication Information

dates:
publication: 1990

Aesthetic Profile

movement:
unknown

subject:
biography (AAT)

themes: social document [T. Shaw]

content form:
journals (AAT) Poetry and Photography

publication tradition:
artists' book (local)

related works: My Name Is Hunter's Point by the authors [T. Shaw]

community: other Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY [T. Shaw]

note: []