Freeborn Trails
Click on an image to hear the audio description
"North Star"
|
"Shoofly"
|
"Monkey Wrench"
|
"Flying Geese"
|
"Bear Claw"
|
"Crossroads"
|
"North Star" Station installed at Wilderstein Historic Site, Rhinebeck, NY
Freeborn Trails is a meditation on the promise of freedom offered by the Hudson River, “express track” of the Underground Railroad, as well as the many riverfront estates that offered access to it, like the 160 acres purchased in 1799 by abolitionist Methodist minister Rev. Freeborn Garretson, a portion of which Wilderstein stands on today. Using found “EMPIRE” brand bricks and pebbles harvested from the river, the design of each “station” is based on the legendary patterns quilted by enslaved women who once communicated in code the movements of the Underground Railroad. Freeborn Trails inscribes the landscape with traces of an unwritten history of the “American Picturesque.”
Special thanks for research help to:
- Prof. Myra B. Young Armstead, author of "Freedom's Gardener"
- Nancy Kelly, Town of Rhinebeck Historian
- Ashley Hurlbert-Biagini and Susan Stessin-Cohn, authors of "In Defiance, Runaways From Slavery in New York's Hudson River Valley, 1735-1831"
In Every Wall There's a Door
"In Every Wall", Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY, 2011
Malthusian Landscape
"Malthusian Landscape", Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgfield, CT, 2012
Kingston Sculpture Biennial
"Empirical Twist", Kingston Sculpture Biennial, Kingston, NY, 2015
Manifesta 8 Biennial, Murcia, Spain
"Under Every Church Here Lies a Mosque", Manifesta 8 Biennial, Murcia, Spain, 2010
DBLSPK
"DBLSPK", MDF, mirrors, Pocketbook Factory, Hudson, NY
One Drop
"One Drop", masonite, carpet, Bard MFA Thesis project, 2007
aphlabate
"aphlabate", 26 altered phone books, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal, Canada
