Join a talk from Chotsani Elaine Dean, ceramicist, for the Empty Bowls visiting artist lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 5 in the Beren Gallery of the Ulrich Museum of Art. A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m.
The talk is presented in conjunction with the Empty Bowls Chili Cook-Off fundraiser Oct. 21 to benefit HumanKind Ministries and ICT Community Fridge Project.
A significant part of Dean’s research is rooted in quilts from slavery (chattel enslavement) through the Antebellum period, made on and off cotton plantations by enslaved and free African Americans through the mid-20th century. The quilts and the material that give them life, cotton, serve as a historical source and point of departure for her to explore and comprehend this dreadful time in America’s history. The visual and historical synthesis of various craft traditions, historical events and commodities, quilts, the cotton trade, the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and the vast realm of textiles inform and shape her visual ideas and approach to the spectrum of ceramic materials and mixed media.