JEAN-MARC SUPERVILLE SOVAK
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FREEBORN TRAILS

Freeborn Trails

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.”
Click on an image to hear the audio description
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"North Star"
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"Shoofly"
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"Monkey Wrench"
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"Flying Geese"
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"Bear Claw"
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"Crossroads"
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"North Star" Station installed at Wilderstein Historic Site, Rhinebeck, NY
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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"

 

© COPYRIGHT 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • home
  • about
  • art
    • Public Art >
      • Blauvelt Blues
      • Burial for White Supremacy
      • Can A Sculpture Feel Pain?
      • Freeborn Trails
      • Six of the First
      • Thomas Pomplin Memorial
    • a-Historical Landscapes
    • EMPIRE brickwork
    • I Draw & You Talk
    • Strange Fruit; Split Seed
    • Tiny House of Steel
    • video
    • We Wear the Mask
    • The Price of Half-Freedom
  • teaching
    • Museum Learning
    • Visiting Artist Lectures
    • Reparative Work
    • Workshops
  • Press
  • Publications