Woodmere Art Museum has collaborated with Montreal’s The Stewart Program for Modern Design on a new video entitled Syd Carpenter: Places of Our Own. The video, which features an interview of Philadelphia-based artist Syd Carpenter in her studio, includes footage of her garden, which is a source of her creative inspiration. It also shows Carpenter’s site-specific landscape sculpture at Woodmere Art Museum, La Cresta (2021), created in partnership with her husband, artist Steve Donegan. Woodmere will be hosting a screening of Syd Carpenter: Places of Our Own, Wednesday, October 11 at 5 pm.
Carpenter’s work reflects her strong personal connection to gardens and farms. In the video, she discusses her recent series of farm-themed ceramic bowls, which convey the history of African American stewardship of the land. The series is the result of Carpenter’s extensive research - visiting farmsteads in the South owned by African American farmers and learning about the multi-generational history of each farm. Her meticulously detailed ceramic bowls feature farm crops, eggs, and vernacular forms such as sheds, tools, and fences, often on surfaces representing plowed farmland. Each bowl is named for an African American farmer, honoring them as individuals who would otherwise be forgotten by history.
Please join us at 5 pm for refreshments on the front porch and a tour of La Cresta. The screening of Syd Carpenter: Places of Our Own will be held in the Kuch Gallery beginning at 6 pm. A brief Q&A with Syd Carpenter will follow the screening.
FREE
