Mother, Springhouse (Oakland Plantation Series)

Richard Cleaver

b. 1952

Mother, Springhouse (Oakland Plantation Series), 2005

Ceramic, wood, freshwater pearls, garnets, glass crystals, bronze wire, metal, gold leaf, and oil paint

Collection of Dorothy and George Saxe

Cleaver lives on the grounds of the former Oakland Plantation in Baltimore. Mother, Springhouse was inspired by the intertwined histories of the plantation’s owners and its enslaved African American workers. At the base of the sculpture is a model of the Spring House, a neoclassical building designed as the plantation’s food storehouse by the famous architect Benjamin Latrobe (1764–1820).

The Madonna-like central figure represents an enslaved nursemaid whom Cleaver imagined might have lived on the Oakland Plantation. She holds a white child (probably the son of the plantation owner) whose masklike face opens to reveal an African American child (likely the nursemaid’s own). Dogs, often used to track runaway slaves, snarl at the nursemaid’s feet, while the twin white girls flanking her hold threatening wood switches. Raised a Catholic and influenced by the sacred rituals and reliquaries he observed as a child, Cleaver’s iconlike work glows with an aura of commemoration and reverence.