Glenfinnan / Glenfinnan Viaduct, 1899
Glenfinnan
Kristina Brendel
Photograph
Glenfinnan Viaduct, 1899
Concrete Bob’s horse
old, brown, and steady
hauls the price of progress
along narrow tracks.
The viaduct rises,
each arch a brow of ambition.
The longest railway in Scotland
A bridge for steam and future.
On this gray day,
the horse slips
or perhaps
the cart tips.
Horse and burden
fall into the hollow pier.
No cry,
just the sound of wet concrete
squelching and swallowing.
Cement sets and
work continues.
Today,
beneath the rhythm of passing trains,
a horse and cart are forever still,
entombed in stone and silence.
- Noelle Keach
About the Creators
Kristina Brendel
Kristina Brendel has spent her life looking at things, and trying to understand them better. Photography became a way of capturing moments for the purpose of examination. Since 1992 she has explored documentary subjects in far flung places like the Sonoran Desert, Macedonian refugee camps during the Kosovo War, and zone of exclusion around the ruined Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant... among other places a bit closer to home. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Kyiv, Ukraine. By day she is the mild-mannered director of the tour program at Castle Hill on the Crane Estate, and Artistic Director of Castle Hill Productions, an award-winning theatre company on Castle Hill.
Noelle Keach
Noelle Keach is a lifelong lover of the visual arts. She holds a master's degree in education from Lesley University and taught general education to elementary students in the Pentucket School system for 21 years. Before becoming a teacher, Noelle took drawing classes at Montserrat College, studio classes at the Boston Architectural Center, and photography classes at Salem State College. She studied oil painting under painter Enrico Francesco Donati. Noelle also works with ceramics and teaches classes in her pottery studio. She is the co-owner of MustArt Studios with her mother, Patricia Gray-Feidt, located in Ipswich, Massachusetts.