The Dave Project: Clay and Poetry

The Lynden Sculpture Garden partners with the Chipstone Foundation to offer this special workshop. Admission to the workshop is free, but pre-registration is required. You may register by emailing jstepien@lyndensculpturegarden.org (please put "Dave Project" in the subject line). More information at the Chipstone Foundation's Facebook page. In the beginning, before rap, hip-hop and the advent of the poetry slam, there was Dave the Potter, aka Dave Drake. Dave was an enslaved African-American who made ceramic pots on a plantation in South Carolina in the years before the Civil War. He was amous for inscribing his pots with short poetic couplets. In an age when South Carolina law prohibited slaves from reading or writing, Dave was a heroic figure. Through the inscriptions on his massive, 40-gallons pots Dave insured that his voice would endure.

The Dave Project is a Milwaukee wide-art and poetry project that celebrates Dave’s legacy. Part-history lesson, part-writing workshop, the Dave project invites children and adults from across Milwaukee to inscribe their own couplets onto ceramic tiles. What would you say if you had eight-to-ten words that would endure into the future? What would you say about Milwaukee?

A film documenting the series of workshops will be screened at the end of the Dave Project, and the tiles will be displayed around the city of Milwaukee. Join us as we use clay and poetry to bring our city closer together.