There is a famous six-word story that writers have long admired for its economy of power. It takes the form of an advertisement that reads “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” A lifetime of sorrow is steeped into its spare message.
Through Feb. 11 at City Gallery, two exhibitions find similarly potent stories from scant resources. Their aim is to reexamine the lives of the enslaved through their descendants. “Payne-ful Business, Charleston’s Journey to Truth” and “Sleeping with the Ancestors” are also both the product of books that offer unprecedented insight to the enslaved, drawing from different sources to better understand and see them.
Both mine a topic that is exceptionally challenging to uncover. With reading and writing forbidden for the enslaved, their own stories rarely survived intact on paper. Narratives must instead be reconstructed from what little remains: from news databanks to city records, from oral histories to the empty rooms where their ancestors once lay their heads.
Reimagined lives
“Payne-ful Business, Charleston’s Journey to Truth” does so through the work of John W. Jones. The Columbia artist has taken the text of dozens of advertisements from the early 1800s by domestic slave-trading auctioneer William Payne announcing the sales of the enslaved and reimagined them as evocative portraits of the individuals highlighted in the ads.
“A stout, able bodied fellow, A good confectioner, and would make a good field hand” reads one ad, promoting attributes such as skills and character, while also underscoring how the individual’s daily life could be utterly changed at the discretion of whomever comes forward with money.
From those scant column inches, he has breathed life into these hidden stories, and the humanity at stake with every sale. We see, for instance, said confectioner, standing aproned in a kitchen, his ruminative gaze intent on pouring what appears to be chocolate into a round pan.
″‘Payne-ful’ Business, Charleston’s Journey to Truth” is on display at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park, featuring artist John W. Jones along with the historical research of Margaret Seidler, fourth great-granddaughter of domestic slave-trading auctioneer William Payne, to create an interpretation of historical ad listings. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
“I was trying to give them a voice that asked us not to reflect on them as the objects in the old ads, but whether we join with them to confront a system past in one sense and painfully persistent in another,” Jones said.
The City Gallery exhibition sprang from an idea of Chuma Nwokike of Gallery Chuma, who represents Jones, after attending a birthday party for Margaret Seidler, a fourth great-granddaughter of Payne.
“Mr. Nwokike was very, very instrumental in putting this together,” Jones said.
For several years, Seidler has researched Payne’s role in the domestic slavery trade, identifying 1,100 ads to piece together the breadth of her ancestors’ activities, which encompassed an office on Broad Street in downtown Charleston and auctions at what is now the Old Slave Mart Museum. She has previously focused on sharing this crucial story by working to establish historical markers for these sites.
An admirer of Jones’ previous book, Seidler was ecstatic when the gallerist suggested working with Jones. After connecting, they quickly began determining the advertisements on which to base the paintings, working also with historians Bernard Powers and Nic Butler to confirm the accuracy of the tableaux depicted.
“The research he has done is just phenomenal,” she said of the artist.
The three collaborators took on the project pro bono, with the aim of fostering exchange on the true stories of the enslaved. Powers and Butler also helped with the annotations that appear with the ads, sometimes offering historical context and at other times brief commentary on the subtext of the copy.
Many telegraph the subject’s inner reflection as he or she attends to the task at hand, piquing the viewer’s curiosity about the thoughts masked by their checked expressions. As the ads promote their value, and seal their fate, Jones’ depiction of their humanity intensifies the chilling transactional thrust of the ad copy.
“Viewers of the exhibit, Black and White, have reacted with astonishment, and a lot of people came away from there crying because of the reality of what was actually happening during that period of time,” Jones said.
An illustrated career
A descendant of slaves, Jones is a self-taught artist with 25 years of professional experience. He previously created acrylic paintings for a book and traveling exhibition called “Confederate Currency: The Color of Money, Images of Slavery in Confederate and Southern States Currency.” It is based on images found on the currency that underscore the enslaved labor powering those profits.
Since last February, Jones has created some 60 new works for the “Payne-ful Business,” which are the basis of a new book to be published in March by Evening Post Books (which is owned by the parent company of this paper.) The exhibition displays those images.
He was able to draw from his work on the previous book, as well as from his years working in Washington, D.C., as a freelance illustrator for clients, including Time Life Books, IBM and the U.S. Postal Service.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite like this before,” the artist mused.
Hogan: 2 Charleston book-based art exhibits examine lives of enslaved through descendants
By Maura Hogan mhogan@postandcourier.comJan 11, 2024
