Most people know about coal’s history Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The state’s coal region — consisting of municipalities located in seven counties, including Carbon and Schuylkill — spanned 500 square miles. What zinc is to Palmerton, coal is to once mine-dependent communities like Lansford: The substance on which the town was built.

In his book “When the Mines Closed,” Thomas Dublin, a history professor at Binghamton University in New York, writes that at its height during World War I, coal mining and preparation employed 175,000 men. The industry flourished over a 100-year period between 1820 and 1920.

But in the 1950s — following the Great Depression and second World War — mining underwent a massive decline. Come 1992, only 1,400 people in the area would make their living from coal. So how did patch towns like Lansford survive the downturn of the very industry that built them?

Not as many know the answer to that question.

Renee Novak is hoping her art can change that.

Novak was raised in Lansford. She moved back to the area from Florida in the ’90s to care for her mother.

Around that same time, Novak decided to do a canvas drawing of her father, Joseph “Mex” Mariotti, who was a miner in Lansford. “I thought, ‘well, I’m going to do something for daddy,’ ” she remembered.

Novak used a photo of her father featured in George Harvan’s “The Coal Miners of Panther Valley” as reference. She needed to be able to complete the piece quickly, because she was working at the time, so her method was simple: Project the picture on a piece of dropcloth and sketch the figure in black sharpie. She went on to complete more than a dozen etchings of local miners.

But in 2014, the subjects of Novak’s work changed after her daughter, Michele, purchased the Lansford’s century-old silk mill. The mill — which was built in 1910 and turned into a factory in 1934 — was home to a list of enterprises. The last company to call the building home before it went defunct in 1988 was Kiddie Kloes.

“That changed everything,” Novak said. She shifted her focus off miners and onto a workforce whose contribution to Lansford’s survival often goes unnoticed; Novak started drawing garment workers.

As the anthracite (that is, hard coal) industry declined and factories up north became increasingly unionized, “runaway shops” from New York started trickling down into struggling coal towns. Faced with the pressure to support the family, wives and daughters of unemployed miners flocked to freshly established factories. The conditions of these factories were often poor, and the wages low.

“Somebody has to be aware that the women filled in,” Novak said.

The first garment worker Novak drew was her mother, Irene Uher Mariotti, who received an offer to work at Kiddie Kloes but decided to take a position at the factory across the street. Novak then sought other workers living in the area, first in Carbon, and then throughout the Lehigh Valley.

On June 29, Novak hung 10 of those pieces from the Kiddie Kloes building on Bertsch Street — her fifth open-air installation since 2015.

Nesquehoning resident Andy Staehle stood in front of a canvas bearing the image of his late brother, Cornelius Brock Staehle, who died in 2011. Cornelius — or “Corny,” as his family remembers him — stone washed jeans at the KJ Factory in Nesquehoning for years.

Staehle called Novak’s etching “a perfect picture.” She captured Cornelius’ warm smile and carved out his sideburns almost as perfect as he used to.

Novak even remembered to draw on a hat.

“It blew my mind,” Staehle said. “To see it on a canvas like that? Pretty cool … I love it.”

“It choked me up,” he said.

Michele hopes her mother’s work will draw attention not only to the history of garment workers in Lansford, but to the mill itself. She purchased it for under $5,000 five years ago, but covering taxes and insurance on the vacant building has added up over the years.

Her vision for the mill is to transform it into a sort of mixed-use development. It’s a lofty goal, but not an impossible one. In Wayne County, the Hawley Silk Mill has morphed into a “lifestyle center,” equip with shops, eateries and a gallery.

But for now, bringing life out of the old Lansford mill once more is just a dream.

“Right now, I’m just trying to keep it from falling down,” Michele said. “I would love to say the wheels are turning, but they’re very slow.”