Sea Cloud Circle Sojourn

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Pay attention. Attention is vitality.” – Susan Sontag

Once upon a time, a poet and a painter embarked on an eight week sojourn. They drove in the rain out a two lane road to a tiny little undeveloped sea island on the Carolina coast, the one called Edisto, arriving finally at their rented rooms. On Sea Cloud Circle. The purpose of the pilgrimage was to capture and define those practices which sustain the creative spirit. They limited their reading, and chose only three books each to study, ones they thought would nurture their vision. The poet chose to re-read the memoir by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. The painter picked the memoir by Karen Armstong, The Spiral Staircase. Together, they re-read Poetics of Space by the amazing French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard.

Inspired by the writer, Susan Sontag, they tried to follow her advice. She taught her students this: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

That was three years ago. I now live on this sacred island, which is also the land of my ancestors. I am the painter, and the poet was Chuck Sullivan. The eight week retreat was so successful that it inspired me not only to keep painting, but to write everyday, to begin this blog, and to move here. There were more magical moments during this eight weeks than I can record on this one page, but the following principles are a few of the ones that we tested then, and which I now practice and believe are lasting and genuine tickets for keeping one’s creative spirit alive.

We wrote and I painted out on borrowed docks, and we gave away the work. Chuck taught the children free classes at the school. In return, we were showered with pounds of fresh shrimp and the open arms of the community. Not only did we awaken to ourselves and our artistic vision, but we made lasting friendships that continue to this day. The small watercolor below is of the house that still stands at Middleton Plantation on St. Pierre Creek, owned now by the very dear Caroline Pope Boineau.

Middleton/ C.Hutson-Wrenn 2006

The Lessons of Sea Cloud Circle

* Keep a journal and write three pages in longhand every morning upon waking (thank you, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and Vein of Gold)
* Walk three miles everyday (with eyes wide open)
* Practice Gratitude
* Make friends
* Give stuff away – for generosity of spirit
* Eliminate distraction (tv, especially the news)

The Sea Cloud Sojourn was pilgrimage, which Phil Cousineau defines as “poetry in motion, a winding road to meaning”. Edisto Island is often referred to as a sacred place. The word sacred originates from sacrifice. Living here sometimes requires some of that. Highway 174 is a winding sixteen mile path of a road from the Edisto bridge to the the ocean. A winding road to meaning. The experience of this sojourn was even more. So much more.

Sacred Ground, The McLeod Plantation

When it becomes habit in us to be able to rattle off our individual histories it will calm our spirits…….
-Whoopi Goldberg

McLeod Plantation Slave Cabins - CHW photo 2005

It was hot and steamy that August when I arrived in Charleston from North Carolina, on pilgrimage. I became fascinated with my own family’s history in college and had memorized the people and the places for years, on paper. I was here for a full week, guests of gracious people, and I was determined to see for myself, and to get a sense of place. It is part of being an artist I suppose, feeling a place, letting your awareness listen with all its wordless ability. There was more to know than I could get in a book, or online. I needed to walk on the land, and breathe the air, in the places they lived.

The McLeod Plantation, owned by Historic Charleston Foundation for many years, was sold recently to the American School for the Building Trades, but whose plans for the property are worrisome to the non profit group called the Friends of McLeod, charged with her care. It is just over the bridge from downtown, on James Island. William Wallace McLeod, born on Edisto Island in 1820, bought it in 1851, and built the two story house that still stands at the site. Our mutual ancestors were the McLeods of the Beaufort area, John McLeod who married Margaret Johnston in 1743, and and their son, Aeneas.

So, here I was, in a place of astonishing natural beauty, standing in the drive of an oak avenue (an Allee), so distinctive to the Carolina Lowcountry, a place so quiet I could sense the stories in the air. Stephanie Hunt described this place as “bearing the blood, bones, and memory of settlers, slaves, soldiers, and planters.”

Now, the plantation encompasses 60 acres of fields and woods. It once included most of James Island, and is one of the few complete and intact antebellum ensembles, including a main house, a slave street with five frame cabins, a kitchen, a dairy, gin house, barn and outbuildings that even include a four seater outhouse. According to Alphonso Brown of GullahTours, blacks continued to occupy these slave quarters even until 1990, when the last owner, William Ellis McLeod, well known as “Mr Willie” died, at age 105. It is open to the public only occasionally now.

The plantation first appeared on a 1695 map as a 617-acre plantation along the Wappoo and Stono rivers on James Island. Originally belonging to Morgan Morris, the land changed hands several times during the 18th century. Samuel Perroneau, who purchased the property in 1741 first cultivated the land. His daughter, Elizabeth, inherited a portion of the land with her husband, Edward Lightwood II in 1771, and it remained in the Lightwood family when their daughter, Sarah Lightwood Parker, and her husband, William McKenzie Parker II, began cultivating Sea Island Cotton. Though this long staple cotton was normally considered highly profitable, a combination of poor drainage and depleted soil soon made the plantation known as “pick-pocket place”. McKenzie increased the size of the plantation to 914.5 acres of land and 779 acres of marsh, and in 1851, sold the plantation to William Wallace McLeod, from Edisto, the island well known for its Sea Island cotton. It was he who tackled the drainage issues, and he who built the house that exists today.

The main activity on James Island was the raising of beef, which gave this plantation a different financial advantage when everyone else was struggling with cotton. Cotton and rice were planted here but not on a large scale. Indigo was also a major crop at the plantation. McLeod’s Plantation was mainly known for beef, and the slaves from the Gambia River region, according to Alphonso Brown, were expert horseman and cattle herders. They were America’s first cowboys! Cattle was grazed on lands, often islands and savannas called Cowpens in the Lowcountry, and there is a small island on Edisto Island that still bears that name.
With the coming of the Civil War and Union occupation of nearby barrier islands, McLeod moved his family to Greenwood, S.C, and a slave named Steve Forrest was placed in charge of the plantation in the family’s absence. McLeod joined the Charleston Light Dragoons in 1861 and was mortally wounded in 1864. The plantation house served as headquarters for General Gist’s Brigade, as well as Confederate unit headquarters, a commissary, and a field hospital until the island fell to the invading Federal army in the spring of 1865. When Confederate forces evacuated Charleston on Feb. 17, 1865, Federal troops used the plantation as a field hospital and officers’ quarters. The 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiments, one of the first official black units in the United States Armed forces, were among the units that camped at the site. The front parlor was used as a surgical theater and many Union and Confederate dead were buried at nearby Battery Means and the old slave cemetery along the Wappoo banks in front of the house. After the Civil War, McLeod Plantation became headquarters for the Freedmen’s Bureau for the James Island district and in 1879, the McLeod family regained the property, and in 1918 William Ellis McLeod began raising potatoes, asparagus and dairy cattle.

“Mr. Willie,” as he was known, also knew to preserve this land, and arranged for it not to be sold to developers. This is rare earth as Georges Hughes, an older African American gentleman, who reenacted as a member of the 54th Massachusetts regiment, said, “McLeod is the last vestige of living history….It’s a sacred spot.” Indeed.

Making Pilgrimage

The Dock Street Theatre

There is a magical corner in the city of Charleston. It is where Queen Street meets Church Street. The corner may be the most drawn, painted, and photographed in all of the city, a favorite of Charleston Renaissance artists Alfred Hutty and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, and recently, for an artist who camped out all summer, in his van, painting an enormous canvas of the spot. What is the energy that enlivens this place? Certainly, it is the presence of the Dock Street Theatre, which is said to have been the first building built, in 1736, specifically for theatrical performances in America. Later, in the early 1800’s that building was renovated by Alexander Calder (who, some say, was related to Alexander Calder, the artist) into The Planters Hotel. The building complex is the last surviving antebellum hotel building in Charleston. Directly across the street is the French Huguenot Church, built on this site in 1687, which is the only remaining Huguenot church in America. Then there is St. Philips Episcopal Church, whose history harkens from the earliest days of Charles Town, the colony. Her pointing spire and imposing tower, built in the Wren-Gibbes tradition, anchors and reaches to the heavens in this neighborhood, now called the French Quarter. The engraving above is by Alfred Hutty.

This is a place that confirmed for me the power of pilgrimage. Some years ago, after years of searching, documenting, and graphing the ancestors, one of my goals was to find the house where Aunt Elizabeth Blanche Smith Torrans lived in the middle of the 18th century. From the fabulously interesting, and impeccably researched book about her younger brother, Joshua Hett Smith, (who was accused, then exonerated, of treason with Benedict Arnold!) called Accomplice in Treason (Richard J. Koke, published by the New York Historical Society, 1973) I learned that Elizabeth lived with her husband John Torrans at 36 Queen Street. Her younger sister Margaret Smith had married Alexander Rose and lived nearby. Their brother, Samuel, would move later to Beaufort, and three more siblings would eventually follow. Alexander Rose and John Torrans were merchants in the middle of the 18th century when Charleston was a bustling trade center, the hub of the Atlantic trade for the southern colonies, the wealthiest and largest city south of Philadelphia. (By 1770 it was the fourth largest port in the colonies, after only Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, with a population of 11,000, of which slightly more than half were slaves) The Smiths of New York were children of Judge William Smith and Mary Dubois Het Smith. Elizabeth’s mother, whose beautiful portrait this is, was French Huguenot. Two of John and Elizabeth’s daughters, Rosella Torrans and Eliza Cochran, would be professional artists, landscape painters, according to David Ramsay, the great physician and South Carolina historian.

So imagine my thrill, on this pilgrimage to the places my ancestors walked, to saunter, address in hand, to this very magical corner and stand, awestruck, realizing that this very spot was where the house at 36 Queen Street would have been! A quote from a favorite book called The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau, in a chapter where he speaks of this very sort of pilgrimage says that people wonder what you are pursuing when you search for ancestors. He suggests telling the story about the thread. Pilgrimage is to go somewhere looking for the sacred. It is also about making meaning, and being able to see what is often right before our eyes! It’s about finding the ‘under glimmer’ about which, the poet, Basho, reminds us. It is the age old story, the same as the archetypal Greek myth of Ariadne, Theseus and the labyrinth. It is about going out to come back, about coming full circle, about finding the golden thread that leads us to our center.

Edisto Indians, religion and the natural world

“What we can know with any confidence derives from the experience of the senses.”
- John Locke (1632-1704) from “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”

Carolina's Natural Shore, State Park Edisto Island

I am an artist, not a formal historian, philosopher, or genealogist. My take on the world is primarily through my senses, those visual ones of color and value, but also those of taste, touch, smell, and spirit. But I love this history of the ancestors and like the great poet Robert Frost said, “yet knowing how way leads to way” it has led me to a fascination with the early days of Carolina’s written history.

Imagine my delight this morning, reading online (yay, googlebooks!) about what the English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704) wrote in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690). He argues that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. I can only imagine that this caused a stir in England at the time of its writing, but looking at this thought simply, as an artist, I think he may have been considering the perspective of the Native Americans, who were being described to him in letters from the new English colony of Carolina, by Dr. Henry Woodward. The Native Americans, who did not have the written histories that we have, had, instead, a deep understanding of the natural world in which they lived, one that depended on the rivers and forests and oceans, a dependence we are only beginning to take very seriously as Americans, now that the world\’s ice caps are melting.

A year or so ago, I received an enthusiastic email from Jim Farr, Chair of the department of Political Science of Northwestern University. He is a John Locke scholar who was writing a new paper, and he had stumbled upon my little family history web page about Henry Woodward and the native from Edisto Island, named Shadoo. He was the Native who served as the exchange when Woodward stayed onshore after the Robert Sandford Expedition from Barbados, in 1666. Apparently there is some written correspondence about two more Natives, simply called “Honest” and “Just” who visited England. Professor Farr graciously sent me a copy of a letter that my ancestor Henry Woodward wrote to John Locke, in 1675. From what I understand of John Locke, he was insatiably curious, about not only philosophy, but science, education, religion, medicine, and much else.

Excerpts from this letter are below. The Natives he found in Carolina are so attuned to the sensual world that they can tell the tides from the songs of birds. He reveals, too, that the Natives tell the story of “the deluge,” replacing the dove with a red bird, in the story we know as The Great Flood of Noah. It is an archetypal story that appears in many cultures from Gilgamesh to the Bible.

305. Dr. Henry Woodward to Locke, 12 November 1675
The letter is mentioned by Locke in his Journal, 7 June 1679 (p. 99). The writer was active as a surgeon and explorer between 1666 and 1686.

Sir, I have made the best inquiry that I can concerneing the religion and worship. Originall, and customes of our natives. especeally among the Port Royall Indians amongst whom I am best accquainted. they worship the Sun and say they have knowledge of Spirits who appeare often to them… they acknowledge the sun to bee the immedeate cause of the groth and increse of all things …every year they have severall feast and dances particularly appointed. they have some notions of the deluge, and say that two onely were saved in a cave, who after the flood found a red bird dead: the which as the pulled of his feathers between their fingers they blew them from them of which came Indians. each time a severall tribe and of a severall speech. which they severally named as they still were formed. and they say these two knew the waters to bee dried up by the singing of the said red bird. and to my knowledg let them bee in the woods at any distance from the river they can by the varying of the said birds note tell whether the water ebbeth or floweth…
Yours to command,
HENRY WOODWARD

The Blacksmither’s Art

Jewelry of Simmon's gate design

Philip Simmons is a living legend. He is Charleston’s best known blacksmith. His love of the anvil and the hammer is evident and his recognition is long overdue. The Smithsonian Museum named him a National Heritage Fellow and the National Endowment for the Arts named him a “master traditional artist.” The curled circles of black wrought iron, that grace the doorways and windows of so much of Charleston, continues a tradition begun here by the early colonists. “Wrought ironwork (much of the early pieces were balconies) of the 18th and 19th centuries featured scrolls, fleur-de-lis, leaf and flower patterns, spears and wiggletails.” according to the Historic Charleston Foundation.

Many of the earliest gates and balconies in the city were destroyed in the fires of 1740 and 1778, and much of what survived was removed to support the Patriot cause during the Revolutionary War. According the John Michael Vlach, whose 1991 work on African American Vernacular art, By the Work of Their Hands, and who also wrote a book on Philip Simmons, wrote about the earlier blacksmiths: “In the middle of the 19th century, almost one fourth of the African American blacksmiths were free men. Christopher Werner, a prominent metal worker in Charleston, owned five slaves. ‘Uncle Toby’ Richardson is remembered as a “top rank artist in iron”. Werner is credited with the design of the famous “Sword Gate” (at 32 1/2 Legare Street) but Richardson, perhaps, should get the credit for making it.”

Traditional blacksmithing has been carried on by Philip Simmons, and he has trained apprentices to continue the art. He will turn ninety-seven on June 7th. His home and workshop at 30 1/2 Blake Street is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the 11 most endangered places. He began working at this small shop, for Peter Simmons (no relation) at age 13. Peter was given the place by his father, a slave, in the late 1880’s. The wonderful snake gates, the design that inspired this silver bracelet, are those of the Gadsden house, at 329 East Bay Street. This piece of jewelry can be ordered from the Foundation, or purchased at the Gibbes Museum Shop and was created to support the Foundation established to preserve and continue his legacy.

Pink and the color purple

Pink is big in Charleston. Think of Pinckney, as in Charles Cotesworth, or even better, his mother, Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) probably the first important agriculturalist in America, who has an amazing story that tells of her cultivation of Indigo, the color purple. Lots of people in the Carolina Lowcountry have the nickname Pink, not from the color, but the family, and they are proud of it. Pink, the color, is here in Charleston, too, the hue of many of her houses. It’s an island color, its message visually complementing the cerulean blue of the sky, and reminding us of the roots of many of Charleston’s original settlers who came from Barbardos.

Pink House at No. 17 Chalmers Street, is one of my favorites. It is a small and unassuming house, one that was built about 1712. It is said to have been tavern in the center of Charleston’s ‘red light’ district, and may have been used by “practitioners of the world’s oldest profession”. It is the oldest stone building in Charleston and some say, the oldest standing tavern in the whole South. For me, the little house has the quality the French call, une belle laide, a phrase that we do not have in English but one that means ugly beautiful. It’s a quality artist’s are attracted to, one that the painters, and the poets, found in the weathered and crumbling beauty that inspired the prolific work of Alfred Hutty, Josephine Pinckney, DuBose Heyward, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, Julia Peterkin, Edwin A. Harleston and many others during the Charleston Renaissance, the period between the World Wars.

For me, for an artist, color is a language in itself; my own work is expressive and vivid. For blues musicians, the color blue describes the flavor of the sound, their sorrow, the ‘blues’. Alice Walker in her book, The Color Purple, says in her own colorful way, that “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” Somehow I think she might be right.

On walking, and beauty

Solvitur Ambulando. It is solved by walking. – St. Augustine

Charleston is a walking city. As an artist, one of the first tasks we learn is to see, to really pay attention. I truly believe that any one can learn to draw. It only requires careful looking. Daniel Pink in his new book, A Whole New Mind, talks about taking a drawing class so he could learn just that, a skill he estimates is critical for we Americans now. How much do we miss in our lives by not noticing? There is so much beauty to see, so many stories to hear, particularly in this city, about those who have walked before us in this place. In my own painting life, sometimes I will be working on a painting and I just need a break from it. So I take a walk. Often it is the walk that solves or resolves the next place for me to go in the work, or, as St. Augustine implies, in most anything. Things are solved by walking. Henry David Thoreau  said a thing or two as I recall about ‘Walking’ in what is said to be a lyrical, meandering essay on the value of sauntering and on the preservation of what is wild in the world.  That’ll work.