What do love and hope look like in a community as expressed through sharing a meal?

We invite you to join with parishioners from St. Titus for “A Journey of Love, Hope, and Community” featuring Jerome Bias at Horton Grove in Historic Stagville.

Jerome and several volunteer assistants will prepare a meal of various dishes that the enslaved ancestors would have made, cooking over an open fire and using many of the same utensils, pottery, and textiles that the ancestors used. Come spend the day watching Jerome and team cook while he answers your questions. The theme of the day involves conversations about how we see the enslaved ancestors, and what hope and love might have looked like for them. We also get to eat a tasty meal!

School-age children are welcome to attend with parental supervision.

Space is limited for this event. Please register by Tuesday, November 12.

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Agenda:

9:45 AM                Arrival – Parking guides will direct you to appropriate spaces.

10 AM – 1 PM         Presentation begins as Jerome and volunteer assistants prepare food

1 PM                       Meal is served following blessing by clergy

1-3 PM                   Enjoy food and fellowship throughout the afternoon

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Jerome Bias, Furniture Maker & Cultural Heritage Practitioner

Jerome Bias Is a furniture maker and cultural heritage practitioner, specializing in the reproduction of 18th and 19th century Southern furniture using period techniques. He has been making furniture since 2000 and was the joiner for Old Salem Museum & Gardens from 2011-2016.

Bias has been studying the work of Thomas Day for the last twenty years. He has presented for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Winterthur Museum, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). 

Graduating from the MESDA Summer Institute program and serving as the joiner for Old Salem, Bias has learned to see the building of furniture from a material culture perspective. Who built it? What was their life like? Bias has also worked with the Slave Dwelling Project. As the hearth cook during on-site programs, he learned to ask complicated questions, like: What were the skill sets of enslaved tradespeople? How did they craft lives for themselves and their families while enslaved?

Currently Bias makes reproductions of historic pieces of furniture from places throughout the country where his family was enslaved. Through this project he hopes to explore the question: How did his ancestors handle the trauma of enslavement and yet maintain the ability to have hope and love?

Read more about Jerome Bias: https://jeromebias.myportfolio.com/

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