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 in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the United States. The exhibition consists of a center-floor sculpture and wall reliefs made primarily from the tin roof of a burned Freedom Cottage in Charleston, South Carolina.
The exhibition brings together forms that have appeared throughout Williams’s work for years: American flags, stars, crosses, fences, stained-glass windows, birds, and other familiar symbols, alongside references drawn more specifically from Charleston. Williams has an affinity for these forms and the familiarity they carry. He has challenged them, appropriated them, celebrated them, and repeatedly returned to them. In 250 Years from Mr. Freedman, they become the material for another patriotic story.
Williams selected images whose meanings have persisted across the country’s 250-year history. Flags, stars, crosses, fences, eagles, vultures, and other recognizable forms carry associations that have been altered, celebrated, contested, and reinforced over generations. Some enter the exhibition through celebration, others through warning or unease. Their persistence is part of what interests Williams: the way certain images remain attached to particular histories and ideals even as their meanings shift. Their recurrence can feel insistent, even redundant, but repetition is also one of the ways symbols remain present in collective memory. Williams places them in new relationships to see what can be reassociated, what can be separated from an inherited meaning, and what continues to resist either gesture.
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. When he arrives, the yard is busy 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, people, histories, folklore, memories, and invented events occupy the same place. Revolutionary accounts sit beside neighborhood stories and personal encounters. Patriotic decoration mixes with church architecture, old Charleston houses, food, humor, and invention.
Among the references are the Charleston eagle moniker; the story of the Palmetto Rose; crosses visible throughout the city’s skyline; the lore of the traveling pit master; red, white, and blue bunting hung from downtown porches around the Fourth of July; and architectural details from the Aiken-Rhett House. 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 recognizing, in that moment, another artist. Smalls died only weeks later. In Eve of July 4th, Williams encounters Smalls again in Mr. Freedman’s yard, twisting a palmetto frond before disappearing from the story almost as quickly as he appeared. The grasshopper then reappears in the exhibition.
The exhibition arrives during a period of intense political division, when Americans across backgrounds are reconsidering what patriotism, allegiance, freedom, and national identity mean to them and how publicly they choose to express them. Williams responds with an emphatically American visual language. Flags, stars, eagles, red, white, and blue, and the language of freedom and liberty appear openly and repeatedly. Their presence can be celebratory, gloomy, uneasy, and overwhelming. That abundance asks how much American identity still depends upon these familiar ideals and symbols. Their meanings have changed continually across 250 years, yet they remain immediately recognizable and politically charged. Williams puts them back into circulation and, for the duration of this particular July Fourth, exercises and reasserts freedom, liberty, patriotism, and American memory through them.
The sculptures and the story share the same field of forms and associations. A salvaged sheet of corrugated tin becomes a rose window informed by the Aiken-Rhett House, combining the silhouette of a Palmetto Rose with red, white, and blue stars inside an arched form. Birds, crosses, fences, flags, and stars move between the written and sculptural parts of the exhibition.Mirrored acrylic introduces reflection and light into the sculptures. As viewers move through the gallery, works appear within the reflective surfaces of one another. In American Flag, red and blue light spreads across the floor, walls, nearby sculptures, and viewers. Its scale and luminosity recall a chapel window while retaining the immediate familiarity of the flag.
The 250th anniversary provides the occasion for these images, stories, and references to gather around Mr. Freedman, Charleston, and the eve of July 4th.
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
Accompanying 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.
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