On December 2, 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown stood on a scaffold in Virginia, awaiting the drop of the gallows floor. A month and a half earlier, with the aim of instigating an insurrection that would forever eradicate the Slave Power, he had taken over the federal armory in Harpers Ferry along with a mixed-race group of radical abolitionists. For this he had been sentenced to hang. Brown stood for a full ten minutes with the hood over his head and the noose around his neck. He waited patiently as the military gathered in formation to witness his execution. He had already issued this final statement: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” The work in this show grows out of those ten minutes, their possibility and potential. It reaches from the deep past into the present. 

Folklore and myth seep into this telling. Stories are alive; they are promiscuous. They slip the borders. John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold is steeped in American history and storytelling. I created a series of portraits of the people around John Brown as if those people were my sitters. Behind them—outside, beyond the window—something else transpires: a reference to something older and bigger that casts light on their stories. The landscape is a necessary character in the work, and the long arc of tree time is essential to the narrative. Trees are the most patient of witnesses. Their slow perception connects stories and communities across centuries.

The work in this gallery is supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, Oregon Arts Commission, The MacDowell Colony, The Ford Family Foundation and The Ground Beneath Us.

John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold Part 1 is on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU from October 15, 2020 to December 5, 2020 and John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold Part 2 at the Schneider Museum of Art from October 29, 2020 to December 15, 2020.

Here’s a review by David Bates from Oregon Arts Watch from the group exhibition America Likes Me at Linfield Gallery.