rats get fat while brave men die

house plate

installation

external installation

The design of these vases mimic the patterning on bird feathers. Mourning Doves carry the message of hope; the red-bellied woodpecker models the perseverance to maintain resilience in these dark times.

vessel

Thy Friend Pot

a collection of love notes, simple, functional plates representing the courageous, anonymous men and women, Black and white, who risked everything radically, in cooperation

Caged

The caged bird sings \ with a fearful trill \ of things unknown \ but longed for still \ and his tune is heard \ on the distant hill \ for the caged bird sings of freedom. Excerpt from Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, the poem that this piece is based on.

caged detail

vessel

Make More Bread

Mahlon Brosius was my 5x great-grandfather, a German immigrant, potter, Quaker, and abolitionist in Kennett Square, PA. This platter illustrates an act of radical compassion carried out in Lancaster, PA in 1851

Make More Bread Reads:

“Evil has been steadily increasing…whether we are not striking hands with the oppressor when we lend our support to a government that sanctions and perpetuates his wrongs. We believe a responsibility therefore rests on us to enter into an individual examination how far we are guilty concerning our brother in that we see the anguish of his soul and will not hear him.” – Sadsbury Monthly Meeting Abolitionist Committee minutes 1848 (Sarah Pownall was on this committee and signed these minutes)

vessel

just a cup

the wind in the jug

The corresponding poem related to the piece is as follows:

Bluebird potters, they called you, your kiln-smoke grafting winter on to spring. You had the power to call birds north with a gallon crock, rung by your knuckle, toning the fire-birthed heat to the breeze, that clear note drifting south below the Mason-Dixon line. Blue-gray clay hide restrains the bulbous dark inside. I sniff the vinegared past, tip to my ear this conch, this echo-holder, stamped by a whorl at the handle’s base. I read you by your thumbprint, potter. Mahlon Brosius, John Vickers, I hear you in there. My breath across the jug-mouth rumbles.

Sound spills from this clay chrysalis like that of distant tumbrels, or your wagons mounded high with straw-packed mugs and porringers. Slaves — runaways — were the heart of your cargo. Scheming their freedom, you trundled them north, Quaker to Quaker, binding the law’s weak wrists with your compassion. Within these cellar walls I’m centered, like a man who wakes up in a bowl. This stony jug’s the gift of time, and flesh, and fire. Its hand-fixed form now shapes the wind these bluebirds ride and liven with their song. Hold back here, jug, the earth from closing down.

The Underground RailRoad Made Visible

Wagontown Inn, Barn Ruins, Wagontown, Pennsylvania, 1998

Synopsis

Five Counties in Pennsylvania situated on the border between slave and free states constitute one of the most active areas of the Underground Railroad, possessing one of the largest inventories of buildings and structures used by this trackless railroad intact today. New York, Indiana and Ohio have stations of equal importance because of their proximity to Canada and to slave holding states. Maryland and Kentucky were slave-holding states that supported significant abolitionist convictions. Harriet Tubman and Reverend John Rankin found support for their Underground activities in these Border States.

Most station stops and escape routes go without official designation or recognition. This lack of appreciation had led to the loss and destruction of many of these structures and landscapes. Research and location of these places to freedom has become the starting point for my photographs.