From September 23 – November 28, 2021 Climbing the Holy Hill brought together the work of performing artists Brad Wells, Our Native Daughters, and Roomful of Teeth as well as visual artist Allison Smith into a radiant, immersive exhibition experienced while walking up Shaker Mountain. Melody, vocals, and visual elements inspired by the Shakers are combined into this unique sound walk exhibition that evokes the Shakers’ annual song-filled pilgrimages up Shaker Mountain – which they sometimes called the “Holy Hill” — and transform this moderate Berkshire hike.
Climbing the Holy Hill
The exhibition began behind the Village’s Meeting House with a drawing by Allison Smith that you will be able to take with you – as one would a map or guide. San Francisco-based non-binary artist Allison Smith has created a limited edition letterpress print based on a Shaker-inspired gift drawing. The central motif is a radiant series of concentric circles. Inspired by alchemical diagrams, compass rose navigational motifs, and genealogical mapping, they developed a convergent diagram to chart the names of Smith’s ancestors since the 1600s, and encompassing the period of ongoing colonization of Turtle Island/North America. Smith uses this to chart various troubles, such as traumas inflicted or experienced by ancestors. Smith’s drawing provides a blank chart for you to write in your ancestors and color code accordingly, mapping criteria of your choosing. Alternately, you can write messages you received or lessons learned during the pandemic. Smith made the drawing for this print using walnut ink in honor of the messages Shakers received in the grove of walnut trees on their way to Hancock’s Mount Sinai. Echoing the central presence of the round barn, their image is organized like a foldout map for you to use as you meditate/reflect along the trail.
Recalling the Shaker innovation of seed packaging, and their distribution of poppy seeds to soldiers during World War I, Smith’s installation includes an offering of seeds cultivated at Hancock Shaker Village’s farm. You are welcome to take a few seeds home, or cast them along the trail, like intentions, wishes, or spells.
As visitors continued along the trail, Climbing the Holy Hill becomes a GPS-activated sound walk installation.
Walkers tuned into a 45-minute sound work through a site-specific listening app –music that can be listened to along the Shaker Trail, but nowhere else. This sound work weaves together singing and soundings inspired by the Shakers and the trail. The first three songs performed by Our Native Daughters are an ode to anti-slavery, struggle, solidarity, resistance, and hope. The work includes contemplations and Pretty Home, a never previously recorded song written in 1849 by a former slave turned Shaker and sung here by Allison Russell. The second song, Quasheba, Quasheba, written by Allison Russell, is an attempt to reckon with Russell’s family history rooted in West African slavery, and honors her enslaved ancestor. “Such was Quasheba’s resilience,” says Russell, “that she somehow survived the transatlantic crossing in the hold of a slave ship, and was eventually sold to a large sugar cane plantation in Grenada. I wouldn’t be here without her strength. I wept to learn her name.” The third song, Better Git Yer Learning, is a tune written down by banjo performer Thomas F. Briggs (1855). Tunes such as this one provide an early glimpse of that truly American cultural sensation, the minstrel show. Since the tunes were published without lyrics, Rhiannon Giddens takes the opportunity to engage with them as pieces of music without baggage. Thinking about what an emancipated person might have to say in a song like this, Better Git Yer Learning was born. A walking song, the music filling your ears, it becomes a call to action, to educate yourself as you go back in the world after you leave the trail.
Walking further up the trail, was a new work by Brad Wells, Fountain of the Elements, performed by Roomful of Teeth and the spoken voices of some local talent. The piece is named from a quote by Shaker Calvin Green in the 1850s in reference to the fountain at the Holy Mount as ‘this living pool’ being ‘a type of the standing fountain of the elements or waters of everlasting life placed in the New Jerusalem.’ Here the sounds of voices, both spoken and sung, wordless and texted, are woven into a site-responsive listening experience as you ascend Shaker Mountain. As you walk through the forest toward the Holy Hill, Fountain of the Elements evokes Shaker pilgrimages from 1842 to 1852, using Shaker songs, journal records and written testimony. Each piece of audio is tethered to a very specific location on the trail. This means that, in a sense, the listener ‘plays’ the piece as they walk – at their pace, with as many or as few stops as they wish. One is entering a sacred site that is continually singing. The four songs featured are I’m On My Way to the Holy City, Come Let Us March, The Savior’s Cheering Promise, and All Glean With Care.
Sponsored by Mill Town, and FreshGrass, a festival of traditional and cutting-edge roots music. Exhibition dates: September 23 – November 28, 2021
About the artists:
Allison Smith is a queer, non-binary artist whose work embraces craft culture. They create performative sculptures that explore history and identity through reenactment, combining social practice, performance, and craft- based art. Smith has presented their work at museums such as SFMOMA, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Arts Club of Chicago, P.S.1/MoMA, Palais de Tokyo, and The Tang Museum, among others, and their work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Saatchi Gallery London, Linda Pace Foundation, and many other public and private collections.
Brad Wells is the founder and co-artistic director of the Grammy Award-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth. Wells has led the groundbreaking ensemble in premieres of works by many of today’s leading composers. His own compositions and arrangements have been performed throughout the U.S. and Europe and his sound installation Silo Songs, featuring the earliest vocal music of the Shakers, opened at Hancock Shaker Village in 2018. Since 1999 Wells has been music faculty at Williams College, where he currently teachers sound art and voice studies.
Our Native Daughters is comprised of banjo players and collaborators Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell, who together use their music to highlight the experiences of black women in America. Assembled by Rhiannon Giddens to make an album for the Smithsonian Folkways label, Our Native Daughters started as a one-off collective project that turned into a real band who were featured in a Smithsonian Channel documentary “Reclaiming History: Our Native Daughters”.