My Soul Looks Back and Wonders… Praise House: Locating the Spiritual Center of an Alabama Plantation

The Wallace House is a former plantation built in 1841 that has been empty for generations in Harpersville, Alabama. Today, Black descendants of the enslaved who built the house and white descendants of the enslavers have come together to reimagine it as a venue for racial truth and reconciliation through the arts.

This talk, by the celebrated artist Tony Bingham, will center on the historical, artistic, and cultural significance of the “Praise House” -- an open-air sculpture meant for contemplation, evoking the rituals of enslaved people who often retreated into brush arbors for quiet worship and meditation. We will explore the relationship between art, culture, and history, and the role those things play toward shaping our connections to African-American heritage.

Tony Bingham is an artist based in Birmingham Alabama. Bingham teaches studio arts at Miles College, and his mixed-media work in iron sculpture and photography explores the roles of labor, craft, and memory at sites with connection to African-American heritage. With these processes, Bingham pays homage to the ways of rural black folks who take what is there before them and make the things they need, an act which reveals a connection to their origins as an African people.