Going to Ground, 2024
Artist Larissa Rogers at Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, March 2024. Photo credit: Osemwenkhae Studios.
“Dear community, can we go to ground together?”
Going to Ground is a site-specific project by artist LaRissa Rogers that responds to and engages with the history of Zipporah Potter Atkins. In 1670, Potter Atkins became the first-known Black woman to own a home in Boston. She remained the home’s sole deed-holder for the thirty years she lived there, until selling it in 1699. Potter Atkins’ home rested on land now cared for by The Greenway at Cross and Hanover Streets in Boston’s North End. This history was brought to light in 2010 by Dr. Vivian Johnson, Professor Emerita of Boston University, after 6 years of archival research.
A Sculpture Crafted from Soil
Fabricated with steel and earthen soil blocks, Going to Ground offers an echo of Potter Atkins’ home that resonates with Boston’s contemporary realities. Based on an artistic rendering created from historical records, the sculpture stands at two-thirds the size of the original house.
For the home’s roof awning, Rogers developed a unique “scarification” pattern which creates only partial shelter from the sun and rain, touching upon the current-day precarity of homeownership for Black and Brown communities in Boston and across the US. It also references the scar-like form and history of The Greenway itself, a park built over and upon the painful displacement of communities of color during the initial highway construction project.
As part of this project, Rogers hosted an Open Call for Soil, an invitation to Boston’s communities to gather and contribute soil from spaces meaningful to them. Participants sent in soil from over 15 different states and countries, including Massachusetts, Virginia, California, Alaska, and Italy, among others. The collected soil was then used to craft the earthen soil blocks for the sculpture’s foundation, a gesture of collective support, communal residence, and tangible affirmation of Zipporah Potter Atkins’ life and story in Boston’s public memory.
Rogers envisions this work as a way of enacting scholar Vanessa Agard Jones’ call to collectively go to ground: a liberatory practice that asks how we might create new modes of relation with ground/groundedness that prioritize survivance, sovereignty, and freedom.
As the sun moves through the sky above the sculpture, the shadow of scarification is cast onto the landscape, transforming the sculpture into a sundial and reminding us of the generative possibilities that abound in the practice of going to ground.
Inspiration for Going to Ground
“Soil has the capacity to hold histories of trauma, and also produce life,” shares Rogers. “It is a site of possibility, a living archive, a material that speaks in and on its own time. Like soil, processes of repair move slowly,” she continues. “In the wake of archival and state failures to attend/tend to Black life, we look to deepen our understanding of Zipporah Potter Atkins’ life in spaces of impossibility and imagine what’s possible through our shared attention. Going to Ground borrows its title directly from Vanessa Agard Jones, who proposes that we to shift our focus towards the fertile and generative potential of groundedness as a space for feeling, thinking, and practicing towards a possible and insistent commons.”
The final sculptural artwork will open on The Greenway in August 2024 via a performance and community picnic. Throughout the project’s lifetime, collaborating artists Jackie Amézquita and Zalika Azim will activate the sculpture with performances and interventions.
Photo Credit: Osemwenkhae Studios
Graphic Design: Chen Luo
Going to Ground: Brick-Making Parties (August 17)
On Saturday, August 17th, from 2:00-5:00pm, The Greenway Public Art Team is hosting an adobe brick-making workshopswith artist LaRissa Rogers. Come get your hands in the soil, and help us craft adobe bricks which will be used in the activation of the public sculpture! Registration has closed.
Going to Ground: Public Performance (August 23)
Drop by The Greenway during this durational performance to catch artists LaRissa Rogers (@larissa_roger) and Zalika Azim (@26thletter) working together with collaborators -including their moms, aunts, sisters, and several Boston-based artists- to lay adobe soil bricks on-site for the foundation of Rogers’ public sculpture, Going to Ground. We’ll have lemonade, water, and snacks available.
The performance will take place on The Greenway at the corner of Hanover Street and Surface Road, directly across from the Boston Public Market.
RAIN DATE: Friday, August 23, 2024 from 4pm-7pm
Going to Ground: Opening Celebration & Picnic (August 24)
Join The Greenway for an opening reception and community picnic to celebrate the opening of artist LaRissa Rogers’ public sculpture, Going to Ground. Hosted and produced by SIDE Events,
On Saturday, August 24th, from 4pm-7pm, join us for a communal meal and party produced by SIDE Presents (@sidepresents)honoring the life of Zipporah Potter Atkins, the research of Dr. Vivian Johnson, and a new installation by artist LaRissa Rogers (@larissa_rogers). The picnic will take place on The Greenway at the corner of Hanover Street and Surface Road, directly across from the Boston Public Market.
The picnic will take place at the site of the sculpture on the corner of Hanover Street and Surface Road (across from the Boston Public Market), and will include remarks by the artist (@larissa_rogers) and performances by Dzidzor (@dzidzorazaglo), ToriTori (@toritorimusic), and a dance performance coreographed by Nailah Randall-Bellinger and performed by Jenny Oliver. Refreshments will be provided by Chef Noire (@noire.chef.boston) and Dray Drinks (@draydrinks). A floral and sound bath experience will be provided by The People’s Living Room (@emeraldcityplantshop @heidishappytreats @thediahannproject). Event Design is by the Social Butterflies (@tsb.events).
For more information on this event and to register for a free meal and drink ticket, RSVP at our Eventbrite link. We hope to see you there!
RAIN DATE: Sunday, August 25, 2024 from 4pm-7pm
How to Send In Soil
SOIL SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. Thank you to everyone who participated, your contributions to this piece are greatly appreciated!
How to Participate via Mail
- Fill out the form at this link to receive a project packet via snail mail.
- The Greenway will send you a project packet containing a free, prepaid return envelope for your soil submission, along with Going to Ground stickers, posters, and postcards.
- Collect your soil and put it inside a container. Don’t forget to include a note sharing any details you would like to share about your soil!
- Place your soil sample in the pre-addressed, prepaid return envelope, and drop it into the nearest mail receptacle or bring it to your local post office.
How to Participate In-Person
- Read the artist’s full Open Call for Soil Invitation.
- Collect your soil and put it inside a container. Don’t forget to include a note sharing any details you would like to share about your soil!
- Starting Tuesday, May 14, 2024, you can drop off your soil container in the soil mailboxes located in front of The Greenway’s offices at 185 Kneeland Street, Boston, MA 02111 or at City Hall Plaza.