Going to Ground, 2024
Soil from the Open Call to Soil, The Rose Kennedy Greenway, and land of Zipporah Potter Atkins, Oyster shells, steel // 27’x23’x20’3”
Going to Ground, is a public sculpture commissioned by the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston. The sculpture is 2/3 scale reconstruction of Zipporah Potter Atkins home made of soil. Zipporah Potter Atkins was the first known Black woman to own a home in Boston in 1670. Her home was sited on land now cared for by The Greenway at Cross and Hanover Streets in the North End. This history was brought to light in 2010 by Dr. Vivian Johnson, Professor Emerita of Boston University, after a 6-year period of archival research.
The Boston Harbor was critical to the ecology and infrastructure of the Transatlantic slave trade. In the 1980s, the City of Boston displaced 10,000 primarily Black, Brown, and Immigrant residents to build the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, which caved amid financial and construction constraints. The second conversion project known as “The Big Dig,” was a failed megaproject and the nation’s most expensive highway project. In 2008, the City converted the Expressway into a mile-and-a-half-long public park. Going to Ground sits on the site of both Atkins’ home and among the lived experiences of thousands of residents who built lives there.
In the sculpture, the home becomes a liminal structure, where the awning of the home is adorned with a scarification pattern. The structure itself acts as a sundial. As the sun moves throughout the day, the shadow of scarification is casted on the landscape. The home and foundation of the home is made of soil. Soil from the Greenway where Atkins’ home was located, and an ‘open call for soil’ to comprise the earthen bricks to build the foundation of her home. Oyster shells were included in the bricks.