FREEDMEN'S FIELD
objects found
in the field beside my studio
On the day a statue is finished, its life, in a certain sense, begins. The first phase, in which it has been brought, by means of the sculptor's efforts, out of the block of stone into human shape is over: a second phase, stretching across the course of centuries, through alternative phases of adoration, admiration, love, hatred, and indifference, and successive degrees of erosion and attrition, will bit by bit return it to the state of unformed mineral mass out of which its sculptor had taken it.
Marguerite Yourcenar, That Mighty Sculptor Time
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
detail
One day a decade ago as I was walking my dog through a field
beside my studio in downtown Dallas
I found a china doll leg.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
detail
I pick up little things out of the gutter
- beautiful little relics of some spent experience.
They tell stories. Actually they reveal
their life, and ...
we create stories, we can comprehend.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
detail
Obsessive? Maybe?
But for the next several years, everyday,
I'd walk Deb Dog through that field morning and evening.
And every night I'd spend hours at the sink
washing that day's finds.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
detail
Lots of beautiful bits came to the surface. Dozens of pieces
of silverware were mixed in with tools and bottles.
A porcelain laying egg and hundreds of
mule-shoes were mixed in with buttons and door knobs.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
detail
It was as though they were working their way up to the
surface, so I could find them. I just kept washing them and laying them out on my dining room
table to dry. They found their way to the surface and then on to my table. The place settings
happened.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
Dallas Museum of Art
The only western culture inhabitants of that land were the
freed slaves and their descendants.
These relics were their stories.
I simply invited them to
reveal themselves over dinner.
FREEDMEN'S FIELD
at the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe N.M.
I questioned my sanity.
They revealed a story.
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Tracy Hicks
223 North Shore
Dallas, TX 75216
214 948 0609