The former Plainwell Paper Mill, lying right along the Kalamazoo River, has a complicated history with its surrounding city. The mill made Plainwell the city you see today, offering up nearly 500 jobs for Plainwell’s 4,000 residents. But when it closed in 2000, it left behind contamination, economic hardship, and frustrated locals.
It’s a history that artist Sarah Lindley thinks about every day on her way through town.
"When I leave for work and its dark outside, this is this huge, dark, black form in the clear morning sky," Lindley, a Kalamazoo College professor, says. "So there are all these different pieces. The social, political, environmental, and the personal experience living in proximity to this."
Plainwell city manager Erik Wilson says the mill created a family of workers. And while some were happy to see the city purchase the property in 2006, others still can’t bear to go inside the deteriorating structure.
"When we first acquired the mill, I had five or six older gentlemen who worked at the mill asked if they could take a look," Wilson says. "I said yes and I brought them through the mill. I’m walking with them, and they’re telling stories. I’m just in the background. And then they start crying. And these are 70, 80 year old men crying looking at the condition. They’re talking about their son who worked here, how many years they put into this."
Then there are the years and years of contamination, which have turned a section of the Kalamazoo River into a Superfund site.
It all adds up to a complicated history – one that Lindley has been showing through her sculptures for years. Her works look at the paper industry but also depict the pollution and contamination left behind.
But Lindley's newest piece, “Exposure Pathways,” is unlike anything she’s done before. That’s because this sculpture was actually created in the center of the old paper mill.
Lindley walks me through the old building, where metal is still scattered across the floor and raindrops fall from leaks in the ceiling. At the center of everything is Lindley’s sculpture, looking like a giant, white skeleton, stretched long and thin across the room.
The piece came together through a grant from the Great Lakes College Association, and it’s part of a larger exhibit from the Smithsonian Institute called "The Way We Worked," looking at the changes in how America worked over the past 150 years.
Each piece was built out of actual paper found at the mill, folded up and glued together. Lindley says it all represents a slightly imagined version of the Kalamazoo River watershed – every leg and tributary, shown as tiny, fragile lines in a giant system.
"So I wanted to do something that talked about the interconnectivity of all those things, and maybe was more emotive," Lindley says. "Even many of the historical accounts talk about how the first white inhabitants in Michigan moved along the river. So thinking about how entities as well as pollution have moved along that."
That’s where the name “Exposure Pathways” comes from. It’s actually a scientific term used by the Environmental Protection Agency to describe every way that someone or something could be at risk. But Lindley says the exhibit doesn’t outright say that the mill has been good or bad for the community and the river. It’s more a question, she says – is enough being done to protect it?
"Is it basically showing the kind of support and construction and bolstering that the system needs in order to survive?" Lindley explains. "Is it the contamination or intervention that's being shown in the image? Or is it something else?"
Answering those questions is the hard part. When you talk to someone like Plainwell city manager Wilson, you hear optimism. Plainwell has already transformed the mill into city offices, he says, with plenty more on the way. With the river at the center.
"Now things are changing, for the good," Wilson says. "To view the river as an asset as opposed to something that we can dump toxic waste in is a change."
Lindley’s more on the fence. If you ask her where she falls, she’s not quite sure.
"I think I’m a realist," Lindley says. "Meaning I want to be hopeful. But I actually got pretty depressed working on this project early on, spending this much time under the structures and watching how they're deteriorating. But then the city staff have so much enthusiasm. So thinking about what I wanted to do, it was similar to my experience living in the town. These people are really pushing to have this be a hope for a new future."
Whatever side of the fence you’re on, you can see the exhibit through July 19th at the former Plainwell Paper Mill, at Plainwell’s city hall.
