Flyer: Mohegan Intertribal Potluck Social, 2006
Subject
Brenda Hill
(Tuscarora/Choctaw)
Date2006 May 21
MediumPaper
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.22
DescriptionFlyer for the Mohegan Intertribal Potluck Social on May 21, 2006.
The event featured a required public presentation of the Year 8 Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program team in traditional Mohegan pottery. Teaching artist Brenda Hill with apprentice Elaine Thomas.
NotesSubject Note: The Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is a CCHAP initiative since 1997 that fosters the sharing of community-based traditional (folk) artistic skills through the apprenticeship learning model of regular, intensive, one-on-one teaching by a skilled mentor artist to a student/apprentice. The program pairs master artists from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Connecticut with apprentices from one of the other states, as a way to knit together members of the same community or group across state lines. Teaching and learning traditional arts help to sustain cultural expressions that are central to a community, while also strengthening festivals, arts activities, and events when master/apprentice artists perform or demonstrate results of their cooperative learning to public audiences. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Connecticut Historical Society manages the program in collaboration with the Folk Arts Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and independent folklorist Winifred Lambrecht who has a deep knowledge of the folk arts landscape of Rhode Island. Primary funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, with support also from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Community Research, and the Connecticut Historical Society.The event featured a required public presentation of the Year 8 Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program team in traditional Mohegan pottery. Teaching artist Brenda Hill with apprentice Elaine Thomas.
Biographical Note: Brenda Hill (Tuscarora/Choctaw) is an indigenous artist with family roots in New England and western New York who specializes in making traditional and contemporary pottery and clay items. For several decades, she has exhibited and taught the history of Haudenosaunee pottery at various museums, cultural institutions, and community centers throughout North America. Brenda crafts all of her whiteware pottery by hand, using the traditional coil method and incorporating decorative scored designs and wampum beads. She served as a teaching artist in CCHAP’s Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, teaching student Elaine Thomas of the Mohegan Nation how to make and fire traditional Shantok Ware pottery.
The pair were part of the 20th anniversary exhibition celebrating SNEAP, in 2018.
A member of a renowned family of Iroquois and Narragansett artists, traditional ceramics expert Brenda Hill worked with the Mohegan tribe in southeastern Connecticut to research and recreate the distinctive 17th century Shantok pottery found on the Mohegan reservation in historical and archaeological contexts. The project meant much more than a museum-focused exercise. Shantok pottery expresses culture and identity for the Mohegans in its metaphorical and narrative imagery, and symbolizes the tribe’s homeland on the west bank of the Thames River at Fort Shantok, which is the traditional fishing settlement and burial ground.
Using her knowledge of similar Iroquois pottery techniques, Brenda taught Elaine to locate appropriate clay and add a crushed shell temper, form the base of the vessels by a coiling method, and add both incised decorations and “castellations” around the rims. Decorative features along the rims also depict corn, faces, and female symbols, emphasizing the importance of women and their role as corn planters and life givers in Mohegan culture. The pots were fired in the traditional way, in a simple kiln with embers piled evenly around the wet clay pots for several hours. This tricky process needed weather conditions that were not too hot, too cold, too wet, or too windy, but the results were perfect. A display of their pots was presented at the Mohegan Intertribal Social at Fort Shantok in 2006, where Brenda and Elaine discussed the importance of this pottery tradition with tribal members. The reintroduction of the Shantok pottery form contributes authentic recreations to the tribe’s exhibits, collections, and education programs. As the Mohegan Nation’s Assistant Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Elaine incorporates the cultural and scientific knowledge gained from the apprenticeship into her important daily life and work. "I believe it is culturally important to bring this traditional art form back to the community, to revitalize the skill of pottery-making hopefully for generations to come. I cannot think of a better way for me to give back to my tribe than to honor the ancestors that gave us this gift and for Shantok ware to once more be made in the homeland it was named for." Elaine Thomas, Mohegan
Additional audio, video, and photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this artist.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
