*Juneteenth clay workshops are for Black & Brown participants only.*

Juneteenth became a day of the celebration for American Black people in 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that 250,000 enslaved Black people were free by executive decree. This was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and some 89 years after July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Lena Davis, a ceramic artist and teacher at Artshack, will explore the meaning of this day through a collaborative project with members of the community. What does freedom mean to us today? And how do we want to commemorate what it meant to previous generations of Black people in the U.S.?

Participants will build and decorate bowls using the paper transfer technique.