Woven Wind: Clay Workshop

Join us for a community clay workshop to be held at the Mississippi School of Folk Arts on Friday, April 25th, 12-2 pm. Lunch provided!

FREE community workshop, help make clay "cypress knees" on the wheel and/or hand-building techniques while learning about Woven Wind.

Following the workshop, community members will place the unfired clay objects on site at Monmouth, John A. Quitman's former family home, where the Toles's family ancestors were enslaved. The clay objects, which symbolically carry the voices of the enslaved, will dissolve with the landscape over time to memorialize the site of the family's painful history.

Later that evening we will have a presentation of Woven Wind, a selection of clay vessels and the "Toles Family: Coming Home" film, based on the descendants' oral histories, will be shown at the Museum of African American History and Culture in Natchez, MS, April 25, 2025 from 4-5pm.

Woven Wind is a multi-layered artistic endeavor grounded in critical research on the Lovell-Quitman archive at the University of the South, Sewanee.Extensive plantation records, photographs, and objects found in the archive, document the lives of the officer William Storrow Lovell and wife Antonia, whose father was John A. Quitman (1799-1858), a large slave owner and former governor of Mississippi. The inventories of the enslaved people produced in 1858 after John A. Quitman's death led the team of artists with a genealogist to locate a family of descendants. Following this lead, the team met the Toles family to record their oral histories and examine America's history of slavery and bondage using their voice. In the film, family members talk about tracing and searching for their ancestors, the value of repair, the legacy of racism, and how it affected their family. They also share their thoughts on moving forward and what reparations could look like.

In the "Woven Wind" project, Vesna Pavlović is the lead artist, joined by Nashville-based curator Courtney Adair Johnson, artist Marlos E'van, musician Rod McGaha, community advocate Mélisande Short-Colomb, founding member of the GU272 Advocacy Team, historian Woody Register, Director of the Roberson Project for Slavery, Race and Reconciliation (Sewanee), and family researcher and genealogist, Jan Hillegas. Archival research, community engagements, photography, painting and sound, and ceramic workshops collectively re-imagine the archive and construct a platform for education, conversation, empathy, and repair.

Woven Wind at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture

Exhibition: April 25, 2025

Talk/Reception: 4-5pm

Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture,

The Natchez Association for the Preservation of African American Culture (NAPAC)

301 Main St, Natchez, MS 39120, 601-445-0728

Woven Wind: Clay Workshop

Workshop: Friday, April 25, 2025

Times: 12-2 pm

Mississippi School of Folk Arts

5 E Franklin St, Natchez, MS 39120

@thewovenwind

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