COMMON GROUND Adam Silverman
In the fall of 2019, at the height of the Trump presidency, but before the coronavirus pandemic swept the country, and before the social upheaval and protests ignited by recent and continued police killings of unarmed people of color, I began a project to address the political and cultural divisions in America.
Before there was America the country, or the individual states and the ensuing territorial identities and resulting politics, there was the land that America occupies. Picture what the country (or the entire planet) looks like when seen from space, it is brown, blue and green. The ground (clay), the oceans, lakes, rivers (water) and the plants / trees (wood ash).
This project, which I call Common Ground, involves harvesting those three foundational materials (clay, water, wood ash) from each of the 50 states, plus Washington DC and the five inhabited US Territories (Puerto Rico, The US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands). The materials were all mixed together, erasing the arbitrary borders of statehood, to create a single new material which was used to make the project. The materials were used and treated with complete reverence and stewardship for everything that they are, and that they may represent. Common Ground reflects on the divisiveness of the current state of the country, while also celebrating the commonality and universality of the shared American and human experience.
There are two formal parts of this project. One is a set of 56 plates, 56 bowls and 56 cups. The second is a group of 56 ceremonial pots.
The tableware (plates, bowls, cups) are now being used to bring together 56 people at a time around food. One of the most effective and familiar ways to come together, talk and find common ground is through sharing a meal.
Scott Alves Barton, PhD, a foodways professor and activist is acting as curator of the meals part of this project. He is organizing meals in different locations around the country, teaming up with local growers, home cooks, chefs and activists who focus on that region’s foods, foodways issues and local community challenges. The plates, bowls and cups that I made are being used by many different kinds of people, eating different kinds of food and having different kinds of conversations, which literally represents and celebrates the rich diversity of America. Each shared meal and conversation will leave marks or scars (visible or not) on the ceramics that hold the food. As the pottery moves from location to location, meal to meal and conversation to conversation, it will absorb the DNA of the encounters that it participates in.
The group of 56 ceremonial pots also physically embody the combined earth, trees and water from each state and territory. I hope that they will abstractly represent both the differences and commonality that the states and territories share as a larger, unified group, or country. The forms are not subtle, and although they stand on strong feet or foundations, they are battered, scarred, leaning over, showing the processes that got them here. The tops are open, symbolically ready to receive. They have handles that are reminiscent of ears. They share a formal language with historic pots from most centuries and countries, both functional and ritualistic (urns, chalices, amphorae, trophies, storage jars, etc.)
Our hope is that this project will, in both a very literal / material way, and a symbolic / abstract way, show the richness that results when celebrating equity and inclusion within the diversity of America, its origins, its culture(s) and all of the people who live here. And that it can offer the example of our natural world as a model of positive and successful coexistence.
With the 2020 election and 2022 midterms behind us, things have not gotten any calmer. The country remains intensely divided and it is clear how much we need to work on healing the wounds (some very old and some very new) of this country. We hope that Common Ground will, in its own small way, contribute to the healing.