Charlie Hunter
Bellows Falls, VT
Charlie Hunter is a cheerful guy who paints drippy portraits of decaying American infrastructure in Bellows Falls, Vermont.
MessageWhen I was in college, the State of New Hampshire, which "owns" the Connecticut River, the border between NH and VT, up to the high-water mark on the Vermont side, and thus all the bridges across it, decided to blow up our beautiful old Arch Bridge connecting Bellows Falls to North Walpole. Structurally unsound and, in fact, in danger of such imminent collapse it wasn't even safe for pedestrian traffic! So they closed it down for several years, did no maintenance on it (a State of New Hampshire specialty on things it wants to tear down), then blew it up. It took them four tries. Everybody cheered when they finally used enough dynamite to knock the bridge into the river, then immediately started mourning it. We mourn it to this day.