250 Years from Mr. freedman, 2026
Historic Navy Yard
North Charleston, South Carolina
July 4 - August 1, 2026
About the Work
250 Years from Mr. Freedman is a solo exhibition by Fletcher Williams III presented during the 250th anniversary of the United States. The exhibition consists of a center-floor sculpture and wall reliefs made primarily from the corrugated metal roof of a fire-damaged vernacular cottage in Charleston, South Carolina. Williams salvaged the roof in 2017. The house belonged to Charleston’s Freedman’s Cottage tradition. For nearly a decade, Williams kept the material.
By 2026, the weathered metal had become the ground for forms that had been appearing throughout his work for years: American flags, stars, crosses, fences, stained-glass windows, birds, flowers, and other familiar images, alongside forms drawn more specifically from Charleston. Williams has an affinity for these things and for the familiarity they carry. He has challenged them, appropriated them, celebrated them, altered them, and repeatedly returned to them. Some attract him because of their beauty. Some because of their authority. Some because they are so familiar that they seem almost impossible to see clearly anymore.
In 250 Years from Mr. Freedman, they gather again to make another patriotic story. Williams wrote Eve of July 4th alongside the exhibition. Set on July 3, 2026, the story follows Williams through Charleston to the home of Mr. Freedman on the eve of the nation’s 250th Fourth of July. The yard is already preparing for the following day. A hog smokes over hot coals. Flags and stars are being put into place. Eagles circle overhead. A man twists a palmetto frond. Mr. Freedman counts his stars as the sun begins to set. Within that single day, history, folklore, memory, neighborhood stories, and invented events begin occupying the same place. Revolutionary accounts sit beside personal encounters. Patriotic decoration mixes with church architecture, old Charleston houses, food, humor, superstition, and things Williams simply remembers.
Many of those same things appear in the exhibition. There is the Charleston eagle moniker; the story of the Palmetto Rose; crosses visible throughout the city’s skyline; red, white, and blue bunting hung from downtown porches around the Fourth of July; architectural details remembered from the Aiken-Rhett House; fences; flowers; birds.
And there is a grasshopper. The grasshopper comes from Williams’s memory of Robert Smalls, a Charleston palm gatherer and maker whom he knew. Smalls traveled by bicycle collecting palm fronds that he sold to local makers, including Williams. During their final meeting, Smalls showed Williams a grasshopper he had folded from a palm leaf. Williams remembers realizing in that moment that he was looking at another artist. Smalls died only weeks later.
In Eve of July 4th, Williams encounters him again in Mr. Freedman’s yard, twisting a palmetto frond before disappearing from the story almost as quickly as he appeared. The grasshopper then enters the exhibition. These movements between something remembered, something written, and something made happen throughout 250 Years from Mr. Freedman. An image can begin in Charleston, move into a story, reappear in metal, and return later with a different association attached to it.
The American flag is one of the most persistent of those images. Williams was attracted to the flag’s visual force even as everything attached to it—patriotism, belonging, authority, freedom, celebration, exclusion, pride, suspicion—continues to complicate that attraction. He does not attempt to resolve those contradictions here. Instead, the exhibition is full of the flag. Stars repeat. Eagles appear. Red, white, and blue light enters the room. The language of liberty sits beside salvaged roofing, Charleston architecture, crosses, fences, flowers, birds, and the figure of Mr. Freedman.
The timing matters. The exhibition opened on July 4, 2026, as the United States marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. But Williams approached that anniversary not by illustrating a national history from beginning to end, but by gathering the images, materials, stories, memories, and contradictions that the occasion brought back to him. The sculptures remain grounded in the roof Williams salvaged nine years earlier. In one work, corrugated metal becomes a rose window informed by the Aiken-Rhett House. The silhouette of a Palmetto Rose enters an arched form alongside red, white, and blue stars. Elsewhere, birds, crosses, fences, flags, and stars move between the written and sculptural parts of the exhibition. Mirrored acrylic brings light and reflection into the metal surfaces. Works appear inside one another as the viewer moves through the gallery.
In American Flag, red and blue light spreads beyond the windows and onto the floor, walls, nearby sculptures, and people standing in the room. The flag becomes architecture for a moment. That movement between object and image, memory and invention, reverence and unease runs throughout 250 Years from Mr. Freedman. The 250th anniversary provided the occasion. Mr. Freedman provided the place. Everything else was allowed to gather around them.
EVE OF JULY 4TH
If I hadn’t caught a patch of shade, I’d have missed them. Those stone windows, tucked behind a row of palms. It wasn’t that long ago that word of a Northern promise whistled through Charleston.
Some stayed. Some left a rose.
I wasn’t too far from Mr. Freedman’s home. I always knew I was getting close to his home when I’d see the eagles circling above. They followed the smoke. Just as I did.
After a few turns and some cobblestones later, I stepped into Mr. Freedman’s yard. And there it was, in the center of the yard. Splayed. Branded with a star. Smoking for hours. His prized hog.
I always missed the pit master. His work was quick. Precise. In and out. On to the next town. The coals burned bright and hot, tended to by a few of his nephews, while his sisters tidied the flags and shifted the stars into place, careful not to burn their fingers.
The yard was busy. Hog. Coals. Smoke.
Flags. Laughter. Kids chasing.
I got straight to work. I walked over to the porch to grab a few more stars. And there he was, twisting a palmetto frond. Someone hollered my name from the yard. “Three more over here.” When I turned back, he was gone. Hopped away.
The yard was nearly ready. Ready for another Fourth.
Another year. The sun was beginning to set.
From the porch I watched Mr. Freedman, counting his stars. Pointing and counting. Before he could finish, his crow glided in from the trees with the last fallen star. It burned bright. Mr. Freedman took it carefully and set it in place.
The yard sparkled. I left Mr. Freedman to it. I’d see him tomorrow.
by Fletcher Williams III
July 3, 2026
Rust Paintings on Paper
The sculptures are accompanied by a series of works on paper made by painting a rust solution directly onto the surface and allowing it to oxidize over several days. Because the rust develops differently in each work, the process produces tonal shifts, markings, and surface variations that cannot be repeated.
