Memorial Waterfront Park friendly to visitors, not basketmakers

By Jessica Johnson for The Post and Courier

Trucks and cars pass above Mount Pleasant’s new Memorial Waterfront Park and some of them slow to follow signs directing them from the bridge to the town’s new waterfront gateway that opened July 3.

Visitors have found that the park is a great place to fish, take a nap on a bench or find a backdrop for their photos. Residents say the park beneath the footings of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge — complete with a fishing pier, cafe, war memorial, playground, visitor center and Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion — boosts home values.

Charla Henderson, of Harbour Watch neighborhood, a mile bike ride from the park, said she and her children have enjoyed the fishing opportunities and playground. “It adds to our property value and it’s a great place for kids,” Henderson said.

Prior to the its opening, a park across the street from Alhambra Hall on the opposite side of Mount Pleasant, was the closest playground to Henderson’s home.

The nine-acre $14 million waterfront park has also attracted people from outside Mount Pleasant. On a recent afternoon, Linda Bowles of Ladson visited the park with her family while children made use of the playground.

“It’s a nice use of land under the bridge as long as no one …,” Bowles said pointing to the passing traffic and flipping her hand indicating the possibility that something could flip or be thrown from the bridge above.

The only complaint so far has been from sweetgrass basketmakers. Ruth Wright set up outside the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion for a week and failed to sell a single basket.

Normally she operates a stand outside the Charleston Federal Courthouse where she’s sure to attract a passing shopper. During peak tourist season she sells about 10 baskets a week.

“If I don’t sell a basket, at least I sell a wreath,” she said.

Tourists have stopped at the park, but Wright said they rush into the visitor center, pick up some forms and leave.

“You can’t even sell roses here,” Wright said. “I can’t make gas money.”

The pavilion is open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. But it is to be closed to sweetgrass basketmakers during town events and closes before evening concerts that Charleston County Parks and Recreation holds at the pier.

One basketmaker suggested allowing them to stay through the events to boost sales.

Most often the basketmakers set up along U.S. Highway 17 and don’t need much advertising because they lure tourists traveling the highway as they pass between Charleston and Myrtle Beach.

But at the park, that traffic roars right over the park in a rush of claps and rumbles.

“I don’t know if people know we are here or not,” Wright said.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.

For more video on Sweetgrass Basket Making culture, see “Bin Yah”.

Sweetgrass basketmaking culture, preserved on the sides of Mount Pleasant’s roadways for generations, has been given a special place in a new park near the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

The park, complete with a visitor’s center, war memorial, cafe and fishing pier, sits along Wingo Way just under the U.S. Highway 17 approach to the bridge.

The pavilion, an open-air structure with sliding barn-like doors and shaded porches, offers an exhibit of sweetgrass basketmaking history and room for basket sewers to sell their wares.

Michael Allen, National Parks Service Gullah/Geechee coordinator, said that erecting a building has been a process that began in 1997 when the town first recognized the significance of the roadside basket stand by placing a historical marker along U.S. 17 at the intersection of Hamlin Road.

The location is thought to be near the site of the first basket stand on U.S. Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.

The structure can serve as a model for how other communities can preserve and promote history along the Gullah-Geechee corridor, he said. “This is a representation and acknowledgement of the sacrifice, contribution and heritage of three centuries of history that has been put in a place and that can be experienced by all,” Allen said.

Mount Pleasant Councilwoman Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, taking a sneak preview of the facility, couldn’t stop smiling and said she was a little overwhelmed.

The interior of the structure includes historical photographs, information on basketmaking history and area stories including that of Peter and Pearl Ascue, who have amassed one of the area’s largest collections of sweetgrass baskets. Peter Ascue started the collection in the 1970s when he accepted baskets as payments for vehicle repairs.

Exhibit planner Carol Poplin, who is senior project manager of The History Workshop, said designing an exhibit within the building posed an interesting challenge because the barn doors slide open to let the breeze through and she didn’t have much wall space to work with. Instead, she created three movable kiosks trimmed with wood panels and tin roofs to resemble basket stands.

“It really captures the essence of it,” Stokes-Marshall said of the exhibit.

The pavilion also can be seen as a monument to the growing relationship between the basketmaking community and the town of Mount Pleasant and surrounding area, Allen said. In addition to the historical marker, legislators have named a portion of U.S. Highway 17 the Sweetgrass Basket Maker Highway. Mount Pleasant and Charleston County implemented a basketmaker overlay district that allows basket sewers to keep their stands along the highway right of way from Long Point Road to Porchers Bluff Road.

The community’s roughly 500 basketmakers will be allowed to set up and sell their baskets from the pavilion 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily on a rotating schedule.They will also stream movies and media, including the lowcountry film by Justin Nathanson, “Bin Yah”.

The Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Association has leased the facility from the town and has selected which basket sewers will work when through a lottery drawing system with basketmakers who have volunteered and supported the festival association getting first draw, said Stokes-Marshall. Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival project director Cambridge Jenkins II, will serve as the pavilion’s manager.

The town is the first to have a physical structure to recognize the Gullah/Geechee culture along the corridor, a national heritage area, Allen said.

For more video on Sweetgrass Basket Making culture, see “Bin Yah”.

Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Museum

Gibbes Museum of Art

Since 1905, the Gibbes Museum of Art has housed celebrated American artwork and has served as an intrinsic part of the visual arts community in Charleston. The organization’s notoriety and long history in the city has undoubtedly helped it maintain a donor base and flow of visitors during the recent economic strain, yet it has not escaped without making a few key changes, especially in regard to their featured exhibits.

“We don’t have the luxury to take a misstep. We have to be strategic. We have to understand what the community wants,” says Angela Mack.

Last year, Executive Director Angela Mack and staff brought Grass Roots: African Origins of American Art to the Gibbes. The traveling exhibit detailed contributions by African artists to American art through the tale of the sweetgrass basket. With the exhibit, Mack and the museum were able to showcase African work, an area that is not a large part of the permanent holdings.

“African art is not something we can readily connect through our collection,” says Mack. “We knew that this was a way we could incorporate African art through the sweetgrass basket and say ‘Oh and by the way, we have a piece by Mary Jackson.’”

Sweetgrass Pavilion Dedication Video

TODAY

This season, the Gibbes plans to feature similar exhibits in the upcoming months. Currently, the museum is housing Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Museum.

“Charleston and this region are well known for their folk artists,” Mack says. “People can see a larger context that relates specifically to this region and see artists that are indigenous to South Carolina.”

The Gibbes staff is focused on finding exhibits that will continue to “take a larger view of things that are specifically related to this region.” Mack adds, “People are interested in what is unique about Charleston and the South, and what we try to do is present that through these traveling exhibitions and try to present a context for them.”

The museum has combated the pitfalls of an economic recession by increasing their partnerships with other arts organizations in the community, a trend Mack is very excited about. “People want to see that you are working with your neighbor to stretch the dollar. It only makes sense,” she says.

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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.

A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.

Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.

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