The New Bedford
chapter in my life began strange, not at all what I had expected. I had booked
an apartment, but when I actually landed here none of the things, which the
landlord had promised to fix, was done. The basement apartment was not even
clean. My friend had booked me in a B&B (Devenport House) nearby for that night. I left my
bags at the B&B and spent the day cleaning the apartment. The Devenport House owners were members of historic society. The basement apartment I was supposed
to stay was right next to the Nathan and Polly Johnson’s house, now a
historical monument and a property of NB Historical Society. That evening I had
already spent about 6 hrs cleaning the place, the more I cleaned I found more
dirt and black mold. I was almost in tears; an old t-shirt tied across my face
a big broom in my hands when the main door opened (oh that’s when I learnt the
lock was broken) and there were 5-6 board members of the historical society
standing there at the door. John Centeio one of the owners of Devenport House saw the
place and immediately said “oh you are not saying here girl, we treat our
artists better, you are going to stay with us till you find a better place to
move into”.. My whole New Bedford chapter would have been totally different if
this dirty apartment wasn’t part of my adventure!
The next
couple of days spent at the Devenport House both John and Marlene fed me yummy bread
puddings; we spent time exchanging stories and cooking together and I spent the
mornings searching for a new apartment. Marlene loved people so her way of
opening her beautiful home was to run a small comfortable B&B. John seemed
like had many lives from a rock singer in a band touring all over the country
for several years to now being an extremely progressive open minded pastor,
teaching and helping the kids of the community. One of those evening conversations
they both wanted to see what my work looks like. I showed them some images and
John immediately said “oh these look like monoliths, oh those look like the
stonewalls of South Dartmouth”. That made the whole process easy; I didn’t have
to “describe” what they meant! John told me he had a friend who from the last
40 yrs have been quietly building stonewall around the region and he would take
me to his house right away. Dr Robert French, has a Harvard PhD in anthropology, now works with children at Northstar Learning Centre, NB and spends quiet hours year after year
building the stonewalls. I also discovered he built the stonewalls near the
Allens Pond Audubon and the Horseneck beach area, the exact stonewalls I
admired every single day biking down the lane while I worked at Chris Gustin’s
studio last year!
Long
story short, I got an apartment, I moved in I started working in the studio.
John and Marlene kind of adopted me! I spent time with them, visited Bob too
while he built the stonewalls, walked around those walls watching him collect
every tiny pebble from the beach to support his wall.
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| With Bob French and John Centeio, out in the Horseneck beach, behind us is part of the stonewall built by Bob. |
When my
clay arrived and I was beginning to start the work, I was reading Robert
Thorson’s ‘Stone by Stone; the Magnificent
History in New England’s Stone Walls’. These walls have been a source of
inspiration for me for few years now. Also as I have been coming back to the
same/similar place and have friends whom I revisit, I have developed a special
bond with the East coast. The next morning I called John, and I told him I
wanted to make something for the NB Historical Society as I felt everything
later on in my stay here was influenced by how the journey began. All these
people I met and developed new friendships with I felt happened at the corner
spot of 7th Street. I told John I wanted give something back to that
corner. John told me they had a couple plans: One of those plans was to clean
up the empty plot in that corner right in front of The Nathan and Polly Johnson
house and make it into a community park and later work with Bob to build stonewall
around that. I decided I would take it a starting point and build a form which
could go in sync with Bob’s stonewall. In this process I rediscovered the millstones, a form
that I always admired.
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| Robert Thorson’s ‘Stone by Stone; the Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls’ |
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| An actual old Millstone now leaning on a rock-bed, seen all over New England; Image from internet |
All of a
sudden I had a whole project, a new focus, a new form to work with.
As I
continued to work with the form I also made several tests. I was working with a
new clay body. I wanted to make sure it would stand being in the outdoors. I
first did the shrinkage test, then the color test, then several glaze tests,
water absorption test, freezing and thawing tests.. All this while I built the
first piece.
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| Various clay tests: glaze, slips and naked clay |
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| Various shrinkage and absorption tests |
The time
I was finishing the form, I was reading about the maps tracing the stonewalls
of New England. So without much effort, after one discussion with a friend, the
map took its shape on the form. I went back to the Mishima technique to draw
the map, later going back to working on the minute details on the form, making
the surface look like stone as well as a torn page of an old map..
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| First Millstone taking shape |
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| Carving and the map |
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| Mishima forming the map |
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| working on the texture I want |
The
first piece had a central crack and I very easily broke it into two halves
after the bisque. First thought was “make a back up piece before its too late”.
I started working on the second piece. As the first month was already gone and
in some ways I had moved on to playing and fooling around with other forms (and
I was increasingly getting excited about one brand new form I was developing) I
decided to build the second millstone differently. First I decided to make a
lot of tiny holes on the surface of the large slab so that it has plenty of
breathing space. But as I developed the piece what started off as a technical
decision slowly became an aesthetic one: the repeated action of making the
holes and how the tiny center of it resonated with the circular form of the
millstones made me put in a lot of pinholes on the piece. Jim Lawton’s tip
about the paper pulp and vinegar mix to use as the attaching slip and
Sharbani’s tip about using the wax resist to slow the drying process on the outside
both helped. I took every step while
making to drying to firing to get this piece out in one piece and it seemed to
work!
But in
the meanwhile I had fallen in love with the cracked piece. Cracks and breaks
have always been a part of my work, but this piece especially felt very close
to putting together two pieces of stone to make one wall, without any mortar in
between.
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| Two stones coming together like the pieces of a puzzle, a section from the stonewall Bob was working on.. |
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| Second Millstone |
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| Add caption |
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| Add caption |
In
between all this, I collected several photos from the many trips I took to the
junkyard with my flat mate Sarah. I was looking for the feel/warmth/color/agedness
of the rusted metal when I was looking for a glaze for the millstones. So I
decided to extend that thought. I made several maquettes and tried various slip/glaze applications on them. I fired both the millstones in the Geil kiln at
the department, based on the previous glaze tests I had done layering the piece
with iron based slips and later a very thin layer of glaze and heavy reduction
firing. They turned out to be exactly what I imagined them to be.
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| Sarah Southwick at Cody and Tobin junkyard, NB |
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| The color I was looking for, scrap metal at the junkyard |
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| Maquette |
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| Final maquette/ test piece |
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| A couple of layers of slip and a thin watery layer of glaze, all ready to be loaded into the kiln |
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| Just before closing the kiln door |
The day John and Marlene came to see my work in the
studio, the Historical Society confirmed acquiring the property. They were
starting a new project of renovating the property into a park soon. The park
was to be named after Fredrick Douglas. And John told me; the main symbol of
Fredrick Douglas was ‘the Wheel of Freedom’. It was almost like the idea of the
millstones was meant to be. This corner was an epicenter of history. NB
Historical Society writes about this corner: “Nathan and Polly Johnson,
prominent African American abolitionists in New Bedford, sheltered escaped
slaves in this Underground Railroad ‘station.’ It was here, in September 1838,
that Frederick (Augustus Washington Bailey) Douglass found freedom, a new name,
and with his wife Anna, his first home in freedom. The Nathan and
Mary (Polly) Johnson Properties at 21 Seventh Street and 17-19 Seventh Street
have been designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States
Department of the Interior because of the owners’ role in ante-bellum efforts
to eradicate American slavery and assisting escaped slaves, and, in particular,
their connection with famed abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass. After escaping slavery in Maryland, Frederick Augustus Washington
Bailey and his wife, Anna (Murray), arrived in New Bedford on September 17,
1838, fortuitously met in Newport, Rhode Island by Quakers Joseph Ricketson and
William C. Taber. Nathan Johnson, one of New Bedford’s most active abolitionists, gave him
refuge in his home at 21 Seventh Street and the name Douglass by which he was
forever after known. The
Nathan and Polly Johnson House is located within the County Street Historic
District and was listed in both the National and State Registers in 1976. The
Johnson House was purchased by the New Bedford Historical Society, with
assistance from the Waterfront Historic Area League (Whale), and the Massachusetts
Historical Commission in December 1998.”
The New
Bedford chapter for me began in that corner on the 7th Street and I
am now leaving a part of me behind there…
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| In front of the stonewall Bob is working on, Westport |
I want
to thank a number of people who helped me in various ways during this project:
Jim
Lawton, for giving me the opportunity of being the visiting artist for the Fall
2015.
Robert
French, John and Marleen Centeio for making collaboration happen.
Forrest
Gander, Malavika PC, Sharbani Das Gupta, Aarti Vir and Ray Meeker : for all the feedback and critical input.
Some of the
grad students at UMASS Dartmouth: for sharing the muscle power to help me
move/load and unload the Millstones.
And
finally to Bean who made me feel at home and centered.
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| Bean at 12 Market St, NB |
