African-American Potter Dave McDowell One-Man Show

The Houston Museum is bringing African-American potter Jim McDowell to Chattanooga for two events in July.

• Saturday, July 21 — Houston Museum Outreach Coordinator Lilly Waters will hold a class for 30 children, who will create pottery while learning about “Dave the Potter,” face jugs, and traditional clay art techniques from Mr. McDowell at Scenic City Clay Arts at 3 p.m.
• Sunday, July 22 — Mr. McDowell will portray “Dave the Potter” in a one-man performance at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre at 2 p.m. Cost will be $15 per person, $10 for Houston Museum members.

Inspired by his family’s oral tradition and his own research, McDowell makes face jugs based on a folk tradition of pottery vessels that are made in the form of a human face. Because the graves of African-American slaves were not allowed to have stone grave markers, their families sometimes used face jugs instead.

McDowell also dresses in period costume in a one-man performance that tells the history of face jugs and the story of Dave Drake, a literate and highly skilled slave at the Edgefield Plantation in South Carolina, who risked punishment to create pottery inscribed with poetry or sentiments.

“We have a rare, highly treasured Edgefield face jug in our collection,” said Houston Museum Executive Director Amy Autenreith. “And Jim McDowell embodies that history in the face jugs he makes and with his one-man performance. We want to share this experience and knowledge with Chattanooga.”

When McDowell began making face jugs in 1983, he “began to pour all his stored up emotions about slavery, his share-cropper ancestors, Civil Rights, discrimination he experienced in the mines and the military, religious beliefs, and more into the face jugs,” according to his website. Though “Dave the Potter” may never have made face jugs, McDowell honors him in his own art by including written messages on the face jugs he makes -- usually an anti-slavery message on one side and a message for today on the other.