Ceramic Artist Michelle Erickson Freedom To Lovers MADE IN USA series

In my series Made In USA I repurpose commercially available Starbucks mugs for social and political protest. I began the concept for this series in late 2016 making a historical connection between NFL player now Nike spokesman Colin Kaepernick taking a knee against the injustice of mass incarceration and institutional racism, to the iconic image of the kneeling enslaved African figure made famous by Josiah Wedgwood’s 1787 abolitionist medallion ‘Am I Not A Man and A Brother’. By the early 19th century commercial ceramic table wares with transfer printed images of the “Kneeling Slave” and inscriptions of pleas for freedom also called for the boycott of commodities produced by enslaved African labor- directly instructing social and economic activism through household ceramics.