Planting in Place, Time, and Memory

Location: Charles Knox Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Avenue 

with Syd Carpenter and art historians, Leslie King-Hammond and Lowery Stoke Sims

Saturday, January 31 | 2 pm

$15 (FREE Woodmere Members)

 

Join art historians Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King Hammond for a conversation with artist Syd Carpenter about her retrospective, Place, Time, and Memory. Together they will delve into Carpenter’s innovative ceramic practice, examining how her work engages African American history, land and agriculture, the human body, and the elemental materiality of clay. This discussion offers an expansive look at five decades of Carpenter’s influential career, contextualizing her iconography and symbolism within the framework of African American art.

 

Lowery Stokes Sims, is an art historian, curator and writer on modern and contemporary art and artists. She served on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999 and then as executive director, president and adjunct curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2000-2007. Since the 1970s she has fostered diversification and opportunity for artists having been a witness to and participant in the black arts movement, the feminist art movement and the politics of postmodernism and beyond.

 

Leslie King-Hammond is an artist, curator, and graduate dean emeritus and founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2006 King-Hammond was appointed chairperson of the collections and exhibits committee at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture and in 2007 she became the chairperson of the board of the Lewis Museum. She also sits on the board of the Creative Alliance for the Artists, Baltimore, MD.

 

 

Location: Charles Knox Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Avenue 

with Syd Carpenter and William R. Valerio, Ph.D., The Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO, Woodmere

Saturday, March 21 | 2 pm

$15 (FREE Woodmere Meembers)

 

Woodmere’s director, William Valerio, and artist, Syd Carpenter will discuss the creative journey behind her retrospective exhibition, offering insight into the stories that shape her work and the ways her artistic expression has evolved over time. The conversation will explore the distinct phases of her practice, the development of ideas, materials, and forms, and the intertwined roles of artist and gardener that inform her vision.

 

 

 

 

Location: Charles Knox Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Avenue 

With artists, Syd Carpenter and Sana Musasama

Saturday, April 25 | 2 pm

$15 (FREE Woodmere Members)

 

Artists Syd Carpenter and Sana Musasama will reflect on their lives as artists and teachers, exploring the power of creativity and imagination to build meaningful connections. In conversation with one another, they will discuss their artistic practices, shared sources of inspiration, the challenges they have navigated as ceramic artists, and the enduring friendship that has supported and enriched their work over the years.

 

Sana Musasama’s ceramic and mixed-media works are influenced by her global travels and lifelong engagement with women’s studies. Her practice draws on a rich array of indigenous artistic traditions, incorporating both traditional and innovative approaches to clay and other materials. Musasama’s work is driven by concerns for women’s safety, particularly the rituals involved in rites of passage and female chastity. She is the coordinator of the Apron Project, a sustainable entrepreneurial project for girls and young women reintegrated back into society after being forced into sex trafficking and received the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Outstanding Achievement Award for her teaching and humanitarian work with victims of sex trafficking in Cambodia and the United States. Her work is in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYC), the Mint Collection (Charlotte, NC), and in numerous private collections.

 

Syd Carpenter is known for her ceramic and sculpture work that explores identity, memory, and the stewardship of land inspired by African American gardens and farms. Working primarily in clay but often incorporating materials such as steel, wood, and found objects, she creates sculptural portraits that honor the histories of Black American land caretakers and the communities shaped by their labor. Carpenter is Professor Emerita at Swarthmore College, where she taught ceramics and sculpture for 31 years. Her work is found in the collections of renowned institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Montreal Museum of Art, the Swedish National Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Tang Museum of Skidmore College, RISD Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, James Michener Museum, the Woodmere, and the African American Museum of Philadelphia.