Winthrop University Campus Tour

Tillman (First Floor), Low Tides

	Babette Wainwright
	Low Tides pit fired earthenware
	In Low Tides, Haitian-born artist Babette Wainwright used a pit-firing technique to honor both her own African ancestors and the ancestors of humankind who depended on this ancient approach of working with clay. Low Tides is often mistakenly seen as symbolizing the "Middle Passage" of African people who were stolen into slavery. However, the work is actually a metaphor of the exodus for the oppressed and the persecuted worldwide throughout history. "It is about a people's courage to risk death on unpredictable oceans in the pursuit of survival and dignity."

Low Tides ceramics by Babette Wainwright

Selected by the Winthrop Foundation from the 2001 Clay National Exhibition as an addition to the University Collection, Low Tides is an appropriate counterpart to the plaster panels exhibited at the top of the wall directly behind this case. These panels were brought to Winthrop by its first president D.B. Johnson. Depicting the Panathenaic Procession, they are reproductions from the frieze that adorned Athens' Parthenon of Classical Greece.

Although Low Tides and the panels on the wall above it represent different kinds of journeys, both act as reminders of all who have come to this campus and all who comprise its community of learners.