Creative projects play an essential role in making the stories of the St. Mark’s community visible in the landscape.
Art, Storytelling, Creative Placemaking and the St. Mark’s Heritage Trail is part exhibition and part workshop, showcasing existing projects along the St. Mark’s Trail and inviting new ones.
The projects featured in the exhibition look both backwards and forwards. They fulfill a basic responsibility by commemorating and honoring a community that has been an essential part of Sewanee for well over a century. They also look forwards, welcoming visitors and new Sewanee residents with the “joy and neighborly warmth” that has characterized the St. Mark’s community.
Art, Storytelling, Creative Placemaking and the St. Mark’s Heritage Trail marks the debut of the brand new Sewanee Black History Map. Illustrated by Atlanta-based designer Joe Veazey, the map was commissioned by the University Art Gallery and the Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation, and was designed in careful consultation with members of the St. Mark’s community, alumni members of the Benjamin Network, and participating faculty, staff, and students. The Sewanee Black History Map underlines community through time. Built in conversation and storytelling, it invites further recollection and further conversation.
Other featured projects include the work of the Roberson Project and the St. Mark’s community on the planning and design of the Grove Memorial, a gathering space projected for the former site of the Kennerly School, designed by architecture and design students from Virginia Commonwealth University, led by Laura Battaglia, and Virginia Tech, led by Kevin Jones. Art, Storytelling, and Creative Placemaking on the St. Mark’s Heritage Trail also features the projects underway in the University Cemetery, especially the Rememberings, the hand-finished cast bronze dogwood blossoms placed Oct. 18 to mark the lost graves of the historic Black cemetery. These were designed by faculty member and sculptor Greg Pond after a design by Saint Andrew’s-Sewanee School student Adeline Pond C’27, and executed with the assistance of artist Allie Cahoon and Owen O’Neill C’28. National Book Award for Poetry Finalist and Sewanee School of Letters faculty member Tiana Clark composed Elegy for the Unknown Sewanee Black Dead in honor of the event. Also featured are events led by artist Vesna Pavlović to activate the trail, notably the planting of daffodil bulbs at sites along the trail undertaken as part of Woven Wind, and the planting and events at the Swim Pool site.
Students of all kinds undertook creative placemaking projects to serve the trail in conjunction with the show. Recalling the plants growing at sites along the trail, all of the students at Sewanee Elementary painted rocks with daffodils, hyacinths, and dogwood blossoms under the direction of Donna Barnes. Their markers are on display in the UAG for the exhibition, and will be placed along the trail at its conclusion.
At the beginning of the academic year, the students of Dr. Lydia Reinig’s CIVC135 Communities in Conversation: Civil Discourse in Public Life designed and painted three Picnic Table Time Machines, each recalling a social space listed on Alabama Ave in the 1916 Census of Leaseholders. The project provides both much needed seating along the trail, and multiple invitations to remember and share in the social life of the neighborhood. Dr. Jeff Thompson’s ARTH336 Earth Art and Eco-Action, Dr. Misha Rai’s WRIT135 Beginning Fiction, Dr. Funmi Omo Moji’s ENGL101 Literature and Composition, Dr. Richard Tate’s ENST150 Intro to “Nature” Writing will all also participate in the exhibition with installation proposals and creative writing.
In all cases, the projects featured in Art, Storytelling, and Creative Placemaking on the St. Mark’s Heritage Trail are marked by a shared commitment to the work of remembering and to how that work might make something new. They are shaped by a commitment to learning, and to directing that learning to community purpose.
Come celebrate community and the St. Mark’s Heritage Trail in the University Art Gallery!
