For those in Mexico City and for those affected by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Sometimes I have to honor the sadness.
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Charleston Through an Artist's eye
a blog about the history art and culture of Charleston and Edisto Island, South Carolina
Rain, a painting.
Tagged with: Curks and Caicos, Earthquake, Florida, Harvey, Houston, Hurricanes, Irma, Maria, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, sad
Posted in art
Posted in art
Solace, a painting. #Irma
I painted this 4’x3′ painting this week, sequestered during hurricane Irma while I, fortunately, had power. My thoughts are with those who experienced this vortex. This painting symbolizes hope within a storm, light at the end of one tunnel, and the tree allees of my beloved South Carolina Lowcountry.
Posted in 1
Hutchinson House
Tagged with: Black History, Edisto Island, Gullah, Henry Hutchinson, Historic Preservation
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Charleston South Carolina, Gullah, South Carolina History
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Charleston South Carolina, Gullah, South Carolina History
A June birthday as Wonder Woman.
This is a poem written to me 10 years ago, by the poet Chuck Sullivan © Zen Matchbox 2008, Rag Street Press. Worth remembering.
Chance Meeting Its Match
for Charlotte
Sheldon Church Ruins
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I knew you
were the most beautiful
question to the trick
answer of my heart
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I spread
my narrow hands
to gather to me
your moveable feast
of spices and sweets
of which I ever will sing
of how, “… I on honeydew
hath fed and drunk
the milk of Paradise.”
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I dared to enter
your body’s delicate drowsy
humming before I would be
wet in the fully yes
murmur of your soul’s flowing water
I remembered you
before I knew you
before the fingered little miracles
the fiery illuminations
of your touch
its match struck
unexpectedly in the darkness
surprising the dreaming candle’s
wick with a burning dancing kiss
I remembered you before I knew you
before I knew you
before my eyes felt
the dark-charmed silk
of you dressed in the quick-study
of your shadow’s welcome
dwelling in barest lavish sketch
Art’s empress in the doorway
Wonder Woman framed like the soul
arrayed within the body
making light of the darkness
around me as we met upon the intimate
threshold of our first perfect chance
meeting its match of our blood burning
in the spilled pulse of our Valentine’s fire
Tagged with: Chuck Sullivan, Old Sheldon Church, poet, Rag Street Press, Wonder Woman, Zen Matchbox
Posted in art, Poetry, women, Writing
Posted in art, Poetry, women, Writing
The Hutchinson House on Edisto Island
I am thrilled to announce, today that the Edisto Open Land Trust has purchased this amazing place. Thank you, Jenks Mikell, for relaying the good news!
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows/ Help us to see/that without the dust the rainbow/Would not be. – Langston Hughes
This red-roofed handbuilt house on Point of Pines Road was built about 1885 by Henry Hutchinson for his bride, Rosa Swinton. Today the skeleton of this house still stands. In the spring the house is covered with flowering wisteria, and all you can see from the road now is a purple haze, the color of indigo. It is slowly being reclaimed by the earth.
According to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History this is the oldest identified house on Edisto Island associated with the black community after the Civil War.
“Henry Hutchinson… according to a local tradition, built and operated the first cotton gin owned by a black on the island, from 1900 to 1920. He was born a slave in 1860” (and was the son of James…
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Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. A Slave Museum.
Blue House ©2015 C.Hutson Wrenn
My good friend, Joseph McGill sleeps in Slave Dwellings all over America. His Slave Dwelling Project bravely shines a steady light on history that has been largely untold.
He posted a piece by the Smithsonian today about Whitney Plantation which is a museum devoted to slavery in the U.S. South that is preserved in Whitney Plantation Historic District near Wallace, Louisiana, in St. John the Baptist Parish.
The museum opened on the plantation property in December 2014. The following are some excerpts from the Smithsonian piece, written by Jared Keller. “The 15-year restoration effort was backed by John Cummings, the local lawyer and real estate mogul who purchased the land from a petrochemical company and invested $8 million of his own money into restoring the property and developing the museum “When you leave here,” he told the New Orleans Advocate, “you’re not going to be the same person who came in.”
That is the key to how the Whitney Plantation is unlocking the grim story of America’s greatest shame, a tale too often masked by a genteel preservationist approach to plantation history that has pasted romantic Gone With The Wind wallpaper over slavery’s appalling reality.
©2013 Charlotte Hutson Wrenn
“Often, plantation exhibits were established for those who lived through the Civil Rights era and yearned for a less complicated time,” says Ashley Rogers, director of museum operations. “And that’s an easy thing to accomplish when you have a ‘chandelier’ tour. Where the previous focus at plantations has been on the house and the culture of Southern gentility, things are changing.””
And the Whitney is taking the lead. “We care about the Big House, but it’s not about that,” says Rogers. “This is a slavery tour.” The Whitney Plantation is explicitly not a rosy exercise in Southern nostalgia. The grounds contain imaginative exhibits and original art works, such as life-size sculptures of children to symbolize the thousands of children who died while in slavery. Here is the amazing Smithsonian article with photographs, about Whitney Plantation called Why @Whitplantation is America’s Auschwitz. It is arresting.
Tagged with: African American, Gullah, slavery
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Gullah, travel
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Gullah, travel
