By Jacquinn Sinclair
May 20, 2025
Before celebrated writer and poet Henry David Thoreau made Concord’s Walden Pond and the surrounding woods famous, many formerly enslaved Black people called the same area home after settling in the area after the American Revolution.
One of the residents, Brister Freeman, enlisted to fight on both sides of the war. After, Freeman and others were set free as part of “the largest emancipation in world history at that time,” according to the Bill of Rights Institute. He later purchased land and raised his family in the woods in an area now known as Brister’s Hill, named after him, and a free Black community lived in the area between 1780 and 1820, according to The Walden Woods Project.
The lives of the residents — including Freeman, his sister Zilpah White and her neighbor Cato Ingraham — are detailed in Elise Virginia Lemire’s book “Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts.” Lemire’s work partially inspired artist Marla L. McLeod when curating The Umbrella Arts Center’s exhibition “Weaving an Address,” located inside the gallery and outside at Brister’s Hill.
On view through Oct. 18, the two-part exhibition features multimedia works on themes of identity, history and labor created by Black artists Sharon Chandler Correnty, Ifé Franklin, Stephen Hamilton, Whitney (Whit) Harris, Ekua Holmes, Perla Mabel, McLeod, Kimberly Love Radcliffe and Anthony Peyton Young.
McLeod shared research from Lemire’s book, The Thoreau Society and The Robbins House — including details on Concord’s past with the Underground Railroad — with the artists so they could use it to create site-specific installations in the woods. Much of the fiber-centered pieces inside the gallery were culled from artists’ collections with the exception of Correnty’s quilt.
Correnty’s “B. Cuming a Freeman,” inside the Umbrella, ties together the indoor and outdoor parts of the exhibition. It focuses on Freeman’s life and has key elements Correnty hopes will prompt dialogue, according to the description. There’s antique lace from a wedding dress to represent the nuptials where Freeman was gifted to John Cuming, and the word slavery in black floss embroidered on black wool. There’s also a tree, Concord’s zip code and a cabin to represent his home.
When McLeod approached her work for “Weaving an Address,” she wanted to pay tribute to the Black residents of Brister’s Hill that history forgot. For her torso mannequins installed outside, she “created protective deities to cover their needs,” using Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” theory to inform the pieces. For example, the “Safety” sculpture, McLeod shared, includes painted axes on the arm that nod to a fight Brister had with a bull, and the soldier’s uniform references his time in the war.
“That mannequin stands on a wooden base that has all the names of Black soldiers from Concord that I could find,” McLeod said. Her “Physiology” sculpture contains fruit that grew in the area, and the “Community Actualization” sculpture has a reference to “Malcolm X who converted to Islam while imprisoned in Concord,” a fact, she said that was also referenced in the book.
Ifé Franklin crafted the bold, indigo “Slave Cabin,” a replica of cabins the enslaved lived in, that opens the outdoor part of the show. (Franklin is known for her “Indigo Project” and Eggun or ancestor processionals that honor the lives of the enslaved.) By the cabin, another of McLeod’s torso mannequins, “Love & Belonging” in gold, is placed next to it. There’s a face emerging from the abdomen and a pattern of a railroad track for the Underground Railroad on its back.
More works are installed along an art trail. Bird cages adorned with cowries, white flowers and fabric by visual artist and children’s book illustrator Ekua Holmes blend seamlessly with the greenery. Holmes’ art explores the caged bird poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote about in his poem “Sympathy” and Maya Angelou’s book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” the title of which was borrowed from Dunbar.
Holmes wondered if the birds present in the woods now are ancestors of the birds who lived during the American Revolution when Freeman and others occupied the woods. If so, she said, “they were witnesses too.” So, she wanted to invite those birds to come in and be a part of the story, she explained.
The doors to Holmes’ cages are open with birdseed and rice inside, so the animals can come and go. The cages are painted black because, Holmes shared, “there’s a need to mourn, the pain of that community.”
Down the wooded path, Whit Harris’ “The Prospector” sits on the grass. The facial profile sculpture is a striking indigo — a dye made more powerful by the transatlantic slave trade. The large work contrasts beautifully with the emerald-colored foliage. Harris imagined Freeman as a prospector, she noted in her artist statement, “close to the land — pressing into it, listening through it — as a way of forming a deeper connection with it.” With smooth, flat rocks near its eyes on the ground, it almost appears to cry.
Further along, more than 100 face jugs in various colors adorn the branches of a tree in Anthony Peyton Young’s “Eternal Presence: Ancestral Remembrance.” Young borrowed inspiration from blue bottle trees common in the South used to ward off evil spirits.
Inside the Umbrella, Stephen Hamilton’s haunting “Caulborn” hangs on a large wall. A blend of acrylic paints, natural dyes and pigments on burlap and hand-woven cotton, Hamilton depicts fish swirling around the submerged feet of a Black figure with a covered face sitting under a dark sky. The artist is trained in traditional West African art forms and wrote on his website that he treats “weaving, dyeing and woodcarving as ritualized acts of reclamation.”
Reclamation is at the core of this project, which centers Black identity in Concord.
The elements of the varied works on display knit together the stories of Freeman and others in this free Black community and act as a reminder that Walden Pond’s history began before Thoreau.
The Umbrella Arts Center’s “Weaving an Address” is part of Concord250 programming produced in partnership with The Walden Woods Project and The Robbins House, in association with Gather 2025. The outdoor exhibition will be on view through Oct. 18, and the indoor portion will remain on view through June 22. Marla McLeod, the curator, will host monthly tours.
