Last summer, I spent 5 glorious weeks as a resident artist at Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) in Upperville, Virginia. My first visit to OSGF was in 2021, to attend a two-week residential course in papermaking using wild plants with Alyssa Saccora of The Patchwork Underground. After that initial visit, I learned that on OSGF land and in the surrounding area were a number of farms maintained by slave labor until the end of the Civil War. I learned the names of six of the enslaved persons working on OSGF land, and immediately decided that if I ever returned, I would focus on finding more names and learning about their lives.
I decided on another goal during that second visit to OSGF: to explore the landscape, particularly considering the native flora that the enslaved would have encountered. This required lots of hiking! Fortunately, our cohort included folks who routinely walk the wilds, including housemate Barbara Bosworth, who accompanied me on most of my ventures – identifying and collecting samples of native flora. I also read that many of the native plants may have been used for food and medicine. Plants were also used for protection, and among the enslaved of the African Diaspora, a practice was to place plants, beads, and other items into pouches that were worn around the neck, sometimes containing text or other symbology. These pouches go by several names, including mojo, juju, and gris-gris. This inspired two new works, A Gathering and Gris-gris.
Gathering (left) and Gris-gris (right)
For Gris-gris, plants and found objects were placed in pouches and hung on the wall in a circle. The text on several of the pouches features medicinal plant usages. Gris-gris is a unique artist’s book.
Gris-gris
The original (or prototype) version of A Gathering consisted of fresh plants with their names hung in a circle on the studio wall. The plants became withered and twisted, and were discarded upon leaving OSGF, but samples were pressed and later used to make prints for one edition, which also features names and usages of the plants that were gathered. A Gathering is a double-sided one sheet book – one side can be unfolded and read – that can be suspended and viewed from both sides. A Gathering is an edition of three.
A Gathering (front)
A Gathering, back