[NEohioPAL] E.D. Taylor and Anna Register to Perform at Ingenuity Fest, Sept. 24-26, 2010!

[E.D. Taylor]

News Release:  For information, please contact E.D. Taylor at (216) 965-2209 or 
artistinflux at edtaylorartist.com
http://www.edtaylorartist.com/news
 
E.D. Taylor and Anna Register to Perform at Cleveland’s Ingenuity Fest
 
Visual artist E.D. Taylor is happy to announce These Walls were Built by Slaves, 
a forthcoming work of performance art / ancestor veneration 
ceremony highlighting the ongoing issue of slavery worldwide.  The performance, 
conceived by E.D., who will perform alongside actor Anna Register, will be part 
of the annual arts and technology festival Ingenuity Fest, happening this year 
in Cleveland, Ohio from September 24 through 26 in the under-structure of the 
Veterans' Memorial (Detroit-Superior) bridge on Cleveland's near west side.  

 
When E.D. was still a graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design, one of 
her teachers, Dennis Congdon told this story during a critique:
 
One day in the spring of 1963 I was alongside my father at my grandfather's farm 
off the Old Post Road. We were working on a mortar-less stone wall, working to 
pile stones back on top that had tumbled down and to cut back the bittersweet 
vines that were taking over.  It sticks in my mind that we were on the wall 
separating the Sheldon Lot from the Tractor Piece.  These lots have been the 
Congdon Farm since the early 1700's when our forefather moved down from 
Providence.  In South County my people are known as Swamp Yankees.  Stone walls 
draw the perimeter of each lot on this rocky, boney land.  To plow this ground 
the stone had to be hauled to the fence rows.  But we were cutting hay and 
pasturing dairy cows at Grampa’s place at that time and were working on the 
walls before we moved some heifers in.
 
Sweating in the sun my dad straightened up, dug out his bandana and as he wiped 
his brow, he looked off down across the fields and said,
 
“Do you know who built these stone walls? ...
White men never built these walls....Slaves
built these walls...”
 
I have never forgotten that moment or the way it changed forever my view of 
home.  Ever after I lived in a different New England than the land where Frost's 
stone wall connects and separates two neighbors.
 
In honor of that story, E.D. and Anna will continually build and dismantle a 
stone wall (over and over and over again) in a tiny, dark cell located deep 
under the Detroit-Superior bridge for the three days of Ingenuity Fest as a 
symbolic commentary on slavery.  

 
E.D. Taylor: discovered early in life a love of and a facility for drawing, 
painting and sculpture beginning with passionate, clandestine crayon scribblings 
on her mom’s freshly painted walls.  In good time, she graduated from the 
University of Utah with a degree in painting and drawing; soon after, she was 
granted a generous assistantship package, enabling her to attend Rhode Island 
School of Design's printmaking program.  Since earning a Master of Fine Arts 
from RISD, E.D.’s artwork has been seen in diverse venues, such as PIEROGI 
Gallery Brooklyn’s Flat Files and the Who’s Your Patron exhibit at the Warwick 
Museum of Art.
 
Anna Register: enjoys an extensive theater and dance background with credits 
ranging from The Wiz at East Cleveland Theatre and Cain Park to Beauty and the 
Beast with Beck Center for the Arts and Children of Eden with Weathervane 
Playhouse.  Education includes school work at Baldwin-Wallace College where she 
earns a Bachelor of Arts degree in July, 2010; and equally serious study at B-W 
Dance COncert and The Dance Studio, July 2010.  She has trained with various 
Baldwin-Wallace Faculty in theater, music and dance.  Anna’s skills include 
whistling, playing bass/violin, singing (mezzo-soprano range), tap, jazz, salsa, 
swing and belly dancing.  Both Anna and E.D. hula hoop in their spare time.
 
Acknowledgements:  A heartfelt thank you goes to Dennis Condgon 
for eloquently writing of his experience and for permitting the use of his 
writing for These Walls.Thanks to Landscape Stone Supply for the generous 
donation of 1,500 pounds of thin, natural wall stone. Thanks also to Ipix for 
the loan of two InSight surveillance cameras for recording this performance. The 
artists also gratefully acknowledge Glacéau’s donation of smartwater and 
vitaminwater zero.  Thanks to James C. Swonger for his selfless donation of 
time, creativity and technical know-how and finally, to Ingenuity Fest’s 
panelists, board, staff and volunteers for facilitating this artwork.
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