Join us for an opening reception for Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water at College of Charleston's own contemporary art museum! Guest-curated by Lauren Jackson Harris, this exhibition features artwork by Corey Alston, Christa David, Derrick Beasley and Maya Freelon. This is a collaboration with the Avery Research Center.   

What to expect: 

• View fabulous contemporary art in our galleries
• Mingling with drinks and light bites
• Meet the artists
• Learn more about their practices with a short documentary in our video cavern
• Peruse art books in our Halsey Library
• Revel with other Charleston art lovers in a festive setting

Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water explores ancestral narratives and the enduring relationships between land, water, memory and Black life in the American South. Bringing together the work of Maya Freelon, Corey Alston, Christa David and Derrick Beasley, this collaborative exhibition between the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture considers how ancestral knowledge is carried across generations. Rooted in resilience, creativity and connection, this exhibition explores how the past traverses the body, the land, material traditions and acts of imagination. The artists reveal that the histories embedded in Southern soil and waterways are not static remnants of the past, but living systems of knowledge that continue to shape contemporary Black life while offering pathways toward collective futures.

The partnership between the Halsey Institute and the Avery Research Center underscores the exhibition’s central premise: History is not confined to the archive. While the Avery preserves the records of African American life, the artists in Grounded in Grain, Washed in the Water activate these histories that often exist beyond written texts and boxed objects, through inherited gestures like basketweaving, ecological connections on land, spiritual traditions with water, and various creative practices. This exhibition asks us to consider what survives when knowledge is transmitted through making and remembering.

Together, these artists reveal that Black Southern traditions are not relics to be preserved behind glass, but dynamic systems of knowledge that continue to evolve. Through basketry, collage, sculpture, painting and immersive installation, these artists demonstrate that memory must be honored, practiced, embodied, cultivated and imagined. Grain becomes more than sustenance; it becomes an inheritance. Water becomes more than geography; it becomes an archive. The body becomes both witness and vessel, carrying histories that extend beyond individual experience into cultural preservation.