Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, on view 03.04–07.09.23, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Design and fabrication of environmental graphics, including printed poetry, timeline, response area, photo murals, and label rails. Collaborated to achieve projected poems by potter David Drake above the gallery.

This exhibition brought forward the history of the mostly unidentified enslaved potters of Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, a center of industrial stoneware production before the Civil War. The exhibition centers the work of David Drake, a literate and highly skilled potter, who carved poetry into his work, possibly as memorial, as resistance, or to distribute messages to others, as the pots were shipped across the country. David Drake’s poetry is projected over the gallery to emphasize his talent as a writer as well as a ceramicist, while also creating a circular, vessel-like rhythm to the space itself.

Through immersive murals of the modern-day pottery sites, I’ve created landmarks to guide visitors across and through the space. The photos help to bridge time and build a human narrative to the objects they’re framing. With the 3D designer, we created a memorial space for the potters whose names have been learned by historians, and each name is read aloud over a speaker. The bright green accents reflect the animation of the face vessels and the spiritually-charged Kaolin clay that comprises the white details of the eyes and mouths. Transcriptions of Dave’s poems can be found below each object with which they belong. In relation to carving, I devised visitor response cards that reveal actual Kaolin clay when the user hand-carves their poem into the inky black surface. The responses hang on the gallery wall in dialogue with the objects and visitors.

[This exhibition follows the MFA brand guidelines and font.]

Exhibition featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and WBUR