"I wanted to create a class where students could produce knowledge the way artists do," Chaney said.
The course centers around "Dave the Potter," whose real name was David Drake, a slave who lived in South Carolina from 1800 to 1874. The class focuses on Drake's work and the ways in which it is representative of many unknown slave artisans.
As the name suggests, Drake created pots some of the largest of his time on which he inscribed statements or poetry and his name "Dave." He learned to read and write despite laws that prohibited literacy of slaves, and he also printed newspapers for his master.
Learning by doing is the order of the day for the class, and Chaney is serious about it. Students in the class are splitting their time between the Book Arts Program's Letterpress Studio, Bindery Studio, the F. A. Davidson '14 Ceramics Studio and the classroom.
The class exhibited their book art on Wednesday in the Paganucci Room in the Class of 1953 Commons. Student works ranged from overlapping pages that unfolded like a blossom to small books enclosed in larger ones.
Having spent the first part of the class in the Letterpress and Bindery Studios, the class will soon move to the the Ceramics Studio to explore the medium of pottery, and to toy with the concept of ownership as they incorporate his art into their own.
For David Becker '13, words gain new dimensions in the studio.
"You have no choice but to be faced with the physicality of what you're saying," Becker said.
Printing Drake's couplets on the letterpress allows Becker and other students to study the way Drake expressed his words and then reinterpret it. Students choose the format, size, font and spacing between words. By using the same words and artistic methods as Drake, students said they have gained a new appreciation for his work.
Eileen Vogl '12, a creative writing major with a concentration in poetry, finds the visual aspect of the class a very natural extension of poetry.
"I like working more closely with the markings on the page," Vogl said as she leaned over her carefully placed letters in the studio.
Vogl's poetry classes often discuss the texture of words conceptually, but in Chaney's class that idea becomes a true tactile experience. Now Vogl can choose the physical texture she finds most relevant to her writing. For example, wood type wooden letter blocks for printing produces a softer print than metal type, which is heavier and deposits more ink on the page in a uniform manner.
Vogl said she has experimented with the more variable wood type and likes the way it reflects the earthly and creative quality of Drake's clay pots. Still, Vogl said she is unsure of her relationship with the slave-artisan.
"I may have invaded your quietest lines," Vogl wrote in a poem addressed to Drake. "Well I'll never know Dave, / but know that I was trying to liberate your words."
Vogl said she hopes to offer his words freedom in her work, yet knows the limitations of her understanding of his experience. In contrast to the stark newspaper format Dave worked with, Vogl has taken on a less traditional presentation by overlapping words in different sizes and colors and interspersing them with images of fenced-in unicorns and ancient mammoths.
Other technical aspects of printing also challenge the students' relationship with language. All letterpressed words must be inverted the letters placed upside down and backwards in order to be readable on the page.
Intrigued by this effect, Molly Wilson '13 has printed her work both ways to express Drake's experience with literacy and illiteracy. First, she prints in a way that is legible on the press but not on paper, and then in the traditional way so that the print is readable.
Relatively little research or writing has been done on Drake, allowing the students more space to create their own ideas about his work. Chaney came across Drake's story in graduate school and was shocked to find that the artisan was largely unknown.
"This feels like a real creative adventure," Vogl said. "You could find something new and undiscovered."
