Dec 17, 2019 6 min read

Colleen Nelson sees Greene County in a unique way.

For over 40 years, she has been registering all of the county’s moments and sharing them in her and Wendy Saul’s annual Greene County calendar.

The process, developed over time, demands a certain way of thinking and keeping things fresh year after year is an effort only someone familiar with the area can make. The partners photograph scenes as they see them and decide which month they belong to. Then Nelson draws them for the calendar.

“I just leave my mind kind of blank and I just pay attention to where I am at,” Nelson said. “Two things happen: Either I drive through a calendar picture that I already drew and it gives me this funny feeling like I’m driving through my own pen and ink drawing … or I see something and go, ‘Calendar shot!’ and I just stop my car dead and I get that shot because some moments are fleeting.”

One example of the latter is the February 2020 image, which is a dirt road near Nelson’s house covered in mist. Nelson said she jumped out of her car to photograph the scene because it was different and also something she had never drawn before.

“Something always happens,” she said of keeping things fresh for the calendar after so many decades. “Usually one picture will start the process and then focusing on that picture somehow I get this feeling of what’s going to happen next – I don’t know what it is, but I know I will find it.”

Nelson said she feels like she has always done the calendar – but, like everything, it had a beginning.

The year was 1978 and Judith Fitch had opened a shop in Rogersville, where she wanted to sell a product that would show Greene County to the world. Fitch reached out to photographer Saul and Nelson, who was silk screening t-shirts with local art at the time. The two artists thought of the calendar as a way to bring together both of their crafts.

And so they bought paper and ink and looked through five or six years of photographs to find the best representation of every month. They set up the operation in Nelson’s house and, in the evening, she would transform the pictures into drawings. The next day, Saul would come to silk screen the calendar pages, which they hung on a clothesline in the bedroom.

That year, they printed 150 calendars, starting on Thanksgiving and finishing on Dec. 20.

Aside from giving some away to family members, every single one was sold either at Fitch’s store or delivered in person by Nelson – a tradition she still continues 41 years later.

Now Nelson said about six stores in Waynesburg sell the calendar, but the best way to purchase one is still by getting in touch with her.

“We developed such a good relationship with people that they insist, so I still have to go knock on their door and say, ‘Here’s your calendar,’ it’s become a ritual,” she said.

Although the distribution hasn’t changed much, the printing process has. After around 10 years of printing the calendars by hand, Nelson and Saul received an offer from Rhodes and Hammers Printing in Waynesburg.

The continued partnership meant the opportunity to produce more copies of the calendar and also some funny experiments.

A tradition at the Rhodes and Hammers was to hide a little snowman around the office to make sure the workers had a sharp eye. Why not hide one in the calendar as well? So, in the 1997 calendar, they did it just that a picture of a blacksmith in Rices Landing. The snowman was right in the middle of the fire.

“He was just another black and white spot, you couldn’t really see him, so we put him down and were laughing,” she said.

Someone not only found the snowman but also another image of a bird hidden on a tree. The issue was Nelson didn’t hide another drawing – the bird was an accident.

“I crosshatch, if you look at my lines they kind of go all over the place but then you step back and it’s a tree,” she said. “So, inadvertently, I had drawn a bird in one of the trees. That has always been my favorite story about something really odd happening in my calendar.”

These funny incidents help make the calendar unique – to Greene County and Nelson and Saul’s vision. And they keep happening.

The model for May 2020 is Lola, a sheep owned by Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival co-chairwoman Marianne Turcheck.

Before being in Turcheck’s care, however, Lola belonged to minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and owner of Rivendale Farm in Washington: Thomas Tull.

“Lola was his favorite sheep. He put the word out that he wanted to give Lola and a few other sheep that he didn’t want to see eaten to Marianne,” Nelson said. “When I went out to get the picture, I found out it was Lola who was being fed by her grandson. So it’s just kind of cute that this year we found out that we have the lesser owner of the Steelers favorite sheep Lola in May.”

Nelson thinks Greene County is a privileged place – geographically, geologically and due to its residents. Her calendar is a way to show this vision to other people, even some in places as far as Israel and Uzbekistan.

“I feel like I’m a historian because I have captured living moments that aren’t there anymore. But while they were there, they were living, they were textured,” she said. “I bring focus to it by taking that scene and putting it out there for you to see it, too. When you look at that, you realize that’s worth saving, that’s worth following, that’s worth remembering – there’s a lesson here.”

You can purchase a 2020 Greene County calendar by e-mailing Colleen Nelson at crnelson@windstream.net.