LRMS and Highcrest Visits

In April and May of this year Ms. Avery and Mrs. Kopecki's classes came together as they continued studying slavery and the quest for freedom, but this time while exploring the visual arts and poetry.

Session 1: Ms. Avery's students traveled by bus to work collaboratively with their partner class. Mrs. Kopecki led a Powerpoint discussion with the students on the connection that art makes to a society. Together they explored the art of Dave, an enslaved African American potter from South Carolina who began making pottery around the early 1820’s up until the mid-to-late 1860’s. Dave was a skilled artisan, able to throw very large pots often up to 40 gallons or more. He was able to read and write, which was uncommon for a slave living in the South at this time. Dave often signed his work and wrote short poems on his vessels. The poetry and pottery created by Dave serve as excellent primary source artifacts that shed great light on life and conditions of slavery in the first half of the 19th century.

After the powerpoint, the students listened to an PBS podcast from Leonard Todd’s book, ‘Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter, Dave."

Students also viewed images and text from recently published book: "Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave" by Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier.

After a group discussion about Dave and his life, the students chose one of Dave's poems and held small group discussions on the poem's meaning, continuing to learn about Dave's life as a slave and his desire for freedom, current themes of his poetry. The day finished with the classes creating their own clay plate. Students shaped their slab into a decorative plate shape, trimming edges and some adding decorative borders and various textures. Plates were then left to dry at Highcrest, fired in the kiln and transported to LRMS for their completion.

Session 2: The classes next got together at LRMS. Ms. Avery led a Powerpoint discussion on the celebration of "Juneteenth," a commemoration of African American freedom. Students wrote their own poems on freedom. They used various underglazes to write their poem on their plate and to embellish their plates with the colors, patterns and symbols. Plates were fired in the kiln and proudly displayed. Just like 'Dave the Potter', students were able to connect their art with both the written and visual language.

PowerPoint on 'Dave the Slave' at Highcrest School

Students Read and Discuss Poetry

LRMS Student and Highcrest Student Read "I Shall Rise" by Maya Angelou

African Inspired Border Designs

Students Paint African Inspired Designs on Plates

LRMS & Highcrest Students View PowerPoint on Freedom





Students Celebrate Freedom, Learning about Juneteenth!





Students Read & Collaborate on Primary Source Documents

Students Write Poems on Freedom!

Underglaze Paints on Clay Plates

PROJECT:LUCID "Slavery in America & The Struggle For Freedom"

This 2009-2012 Project:LUCID grant will focus on Slavery and The Struggle For Freedom. We’ll be building literacy and technology skills while we explore this very important aspect of American history and discover Visual Art connections.

2011-2012 Face-to-Face Visits

Field trip #1- The Yale University Art Gallery and The Yale Center for British Art, Yale University-New Haven CT

Field trip #2- Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT to hear Fortune's Story and to learn about 18/19th century Waterbury.

Field trip #3- Mark Twain House and Harriet Beecher Stowe to learn about "Stowe & Twain: Effecting Social Change."  

Field trip #4- LRMS visits Highcrest to learn about "Dave The Slave Potter" and create clay plates that will express our own thoughts on Freedom. 

Field trip #5- Highcrest visits LRMS to write our verses on our clay plates with various underglaze and glazes.

Field trip #6- Project LUCID takes a Walking Tour of Hartford as a group

2010-2011 Face-to-Face Visits

Field Trip # 1: The Yale University Art Gallery and The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University, New Haven, CT "The Slave Trade & Exploring West AFrican Culture through Art." (February 2011)

Field Trip # 2: Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT " Fortune's Story & Slavery in Waterbury" (April 4, 2011)

Field Trip # 3: LRMS visit to Partner School at Highcrest School to learn about "Dave The Slave Potter" and create clay plates that will express our own thoughts on Freedom. (April 13th)

Field Trip # 4: Highcrest School visit to partner school at LRMS to write our verses on our clay plates with various underglaze and glazes. (May 2011)

Field Trip # 5: Project LUCID Group Field Trip- 'The Magic Lantern Show' Orange CT.

2009-2010 Face-to-Face Visits

Field Trip # 1: The Mark Twain/Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, CT, "Mark Twain's Memories of Slavery & Uncle Tom's Cabin" (October 2009)
Field Trip # 2: The Webb/Silas Deene House in Wethersfield, CT, "Slavery in Wethersfield" (November 2009)
Field Trip # 3: The Yale University Art Gallery and The British Museum of Art at Yale University, New Haven, CT " The Slave Trade & Exploring West African Culture Through Art" (January 2010)
Field Trip # 4: The Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford, CT ' Slavery in Connecticut & The Amistad Incident" (March 2010)
Field Trip # 5: Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT " Fortune's Story & Slavery in Waterbury" (April 2010)
Field Trip # 6 A Day with CT Author Patricia Reilly Giff At Lighthouse Park in New Haven (June 2, 2010)

"The Manumission Requiem"

Listen: Hear an excerpt from 'The Manumission Requiem,' a poem about Fortune written by Connecticut Poet Laureate, Marilyn Nelson.

CLICK on Link below to find Marilyn Nelsons reading and to hear a podcast by Marilyn Nelson as she reads an excerpt from 'The Manumission Requiem'.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1433035

A Waterbury Slave Named Fortune

September 16, 2003 : A small museum in Waterbury, Conn., is struggling with a big question: what to do with a set of human remains in its collection. In the next installment of All Things Considered's "Hidden Treasures" series, Harriet Baskas reports on a real skeleton in the closet.Many people who grew up in Waterbury before 1970 remember school trips to the Mattatuck Museum to see the 10,000-piece button display, Charles Goodyear's rubber desk and colonial era tools and clothing. But for most people, one memory stands out: Larry."Larry was the thing to see when you go to the museum," says resident Lillian Brown. "I don't think anybody ever envisioned that this truly was a human being. It was just a skeleton and all the ghost stories that people would tell."Some kids had nightmares about Larry, says Baskas. Others claimed he was their grandfather, or George Washington or some other Revolutionary War hero. Bill Bergin knew better. His great grandfather, in 1910, found the skeleton in a boarded-up closet when he was renovating a Waterbury building. According to newspaper clippings, the skeleton was the remains of a man enslaved to one Dr. Porter in the late 1700s. After the slave drowned, Porter boiled and stripped the body to make an anatomy display. The name of each bone was written right on the skeleton and "Larry" was inscribed on the forehead. Porter's descendants had locked Larry in the closet. When he was rediscovered, he was donated to the Mattatuck Museum."He was displayed the way you'd see a skeleton in a doctor's office," says Marie Galbraith, the museum's executive director. Larry hung in a glass case until 1970 when museum officials finally acknowledged that he was more than a collection of bones."He was a father, he was a husband, He was someone's son," Galbraith says.Larry was boxed up and stored in the museum basement until 1999. Then, Waterbury's African-American History Project Committee learned about Larry. They started an investigation, and found out that no one named "Larry" had ever lived in Dr. Porter's house, but a slave named "Fortune" did. Local records reveal that he died sometime before 1803 and that he had a wife, Dinah, and four children. Archaeologists and anthropologists then examined the bones to get a better idea of how Fortune lived.The Mattatuck Museum now has an exhibit dedicated to Fortune, including a poem, called The Manumission Requiem, by Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson. Fortune's bones, however, are not on display. They're still being studied, and, out of respect, stored away."I think of the Indians and their situation when their ancestors' bones were taken for display at museums," says Al Walton of the African-American History Project Committee. "They came of the mind that enough, we're going to take our ancestors, our old ones, give them a ceremony and lay them to rest. I think it's time for us to do the same, as African Americans, for Fortune."This story is part of the Hidden Treasures Radio Project series, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Cultural Development Authority of King County, Wash.Related NPR Stories

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1433035

Mattatuck Museum Field Trip

January 2012: Full day touring Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury. We explored life in early Waterbury, Fortunes World, walking around the Green and his neighborhood and the history of the Brass City.

Visiting The Yale University Art Gallery

Connecting Visual Literacy and History
December 2011

"Escape From Slavery" by Doreen Rappaport

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Slavery-Five-Journeys-Freedom/dp/0064461696/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329407438&sr=8-2

The Highcrest Project Lucid read fugitive slave stories from the book entitled, Escape From Slavery by Doreen Rappaport. The students read one of the five stories of escape and drew a picture illustrating an important scene from the story. This was the 1st time the students used a Wacom Bamboo Drawing Board to create their digital images.