Haudenosaunee artist Katsitsionni Fox to visit Alfred, replicate Grandmother Pot, in collaboration with Rochester Museum and Science Center and approval of Haudenosaunee Nations

Artist Katsitsionni Fox holds one of her own crafted clay pots. She will replicate a original Grandmother Pot when she visits Alfred University.

Haudenosaunee ceramic artist, writer and filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox will visit the Alfred University campus from Sept. 9-11 as part of an intersectional, collaborative project between the School of Art and Design, New York College of Ceramics, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

The project, part of a larger exhibition at the RMSC, Hodinöšyö:nih Continuity | Innovation | Resilience, is curated by Jamie Jacobs of Tonawanda Seneca, Turtle Clan.

The project was introduced to SOAD by Victoria Wigal, a third-year student who worked at the RMSC as a summer intern and has been studying with Clinical Assistant Professor of Ceramic Art Jason Green.

Green and Wigal met with RMSC staff and Fox last winter to begin organizing the visit, which will focus on the production of a traditional Grandmother Pot using a mold derived from the digital scans made from a Grandmother Pot in the collection of the RMSC. Green credits Wigal "for seeing and seeding this intersection" between several institutions, technology, and digital fabrication

While in Alfred, Fox will gather footage to be used for a short film that will document:

• The entire process of scanning
• 3D printing a replica using plastic 3D printers in the CREATE Lab
• Making experimental prints with the clay 3D printers, and
• Working on creating her own version of a Grandmother pot. We will also be working on making the replica.

Following Fox's visit, Green anticipates producing a halved version of the Grandmother Pot that will become part of an interactive display, where visitors will be able to digitally create their own decorative patterns and project them onto the pot. That phase of the overall project will involve additional collaboration from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

As part of the planning for Fox's visit, Kathryn Murano Santos, Senior Director of Collections & Exhibitions at RMSC, reached out to representatives of Nations that may have cultural affiliation with this pot (including Oneida Indian Nation, Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, and Onondaga Nation) to let them know of the intention to display the work in the exhibition alongside Fox's new Grandmother Pot, as well as the partnership with Alfred to replicate the intact pot.

In August, the project received consent from the culturally affiliated Haudenosaunee Nations in support of displaying the original Grandmother Pot and replicating the pot with 3D scanning and printing technology as a way of recreating the original safely through direct contact with the replica.

In a recent interview, Fox describes Grandmother Pots as craftwork created for daily use by Indigenous people. "Making (her own) clay pots connects her to her ancestors, the women who made pots for daily use in Akwesasne, a Mohawk Territory in upstate New York," according to a transcript of the conversation.

As Fox puts it, "When I'm making pots, I'm thinking all the way back to creation."