Persimmon Creek artist residency keeps Arrow Rock's Black history at fore
To put one foot before the other, let alone create, artists require two gifts. In an ideal world, these would be mere realities, but feel precious at our modern pace: unhurried time and open spaces.
Now in its third edition, the Persimmon Creek Writers and Artists Residency affords these gifts to two artists — one regional, one national — each summer. Folded into the alluring quiet of Arrow Rock, a village of about 60 people situated some 45 miles northwest of Columbia, these artists dedicate two weeks to renewal.
"For a writer, it was a little bit of heaven," said poet, author and College of William and Mary professor Hermine Pinson, a 2022 resident.
Pinson described her Arrow Rock cottage as a place of ease and solitude, which encouraged everyday creative progress.
Respite is the primary goal, organizers say. But several key exchanges proceed from the design. Artists swap stories with Arrow Rock residents; and leaving behind something of themselves, they carry home affection for the village.
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Most important, as Black artists have cultivated their own present- and future-tense work, Arrow Rock's Black history resurfaces, receiving appreciation.
Artists move through Black landmarks, calling audiences into their multiple dimensions. Visiting a historic Black church, the walls sung out to Pinson.
"You could tell they used to have good church in there," she said.
This year's resident artists are Duke University professor Karla FC Holloway, who worked in Arrow Rock this May, and David Todd Lawrence. The latter, an author and English professor at University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, will speak about his creative labor this weekend.
A call to honor
Arrow Rock sounds a very specific, and increasingly harmonized, call. Its world-class Lyceum Theatre draws actors from across the country and audiences from Columbia and farther-flung communities. Arrow Rock State Historic Site ushers visitors into the village's history and natural beauty.
And, with its African-American Experience Museum, Black voices across eras of Arrow Rock are gaining a more proper hearing.
Nancy Blossom tuned to those voices in deeper ways as the COVID-19 pandemic started. A Marshall native who left the area for decades, she trekked back to Arrow Rock to live alongside her mother. Blossom purchased a home that once served as the parsonage for one of Arrow Rock's Black churches.
Refreshing memories of time well-spent in Arrow Rock, she revisited a childhood read, Nellie Page Carter's 1938 novel "Persimmon Creek." Carter, also from Marshall, penned an account of the era's Black community in a constructed dialect.
Adding two and two, Blossom asked herself what she might do to share this history.
"I started wondering about how that African-American presence" in the former parsonage "could be honored, rather than just used" by vacationers, she said.
Asking her son, writer, editor and professor Andrew Blossom, for counsel on artist residencies — and drawing on the energy of people with deep roots in Saline County — the idea took shape.
An informal advisory board of Black and white members brought a dynamic spirit and overlapping concerns to the project, the Blossoms said. They are attorneys, artists, academics, graphic designers — all with specific skills and stories that animate the residency program.
Among them: Teresa Habernal, a Black Arrow Rock native who often returns to the area; Clarence Smith, a Kansas City musician with longstanding ties to "to Black descendants" of Arrow Rock and neighboring towns, as he notes online; and Myra Christopher, a white resident who, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, convened conversations about how Arrow Rock's racial history is and isn't reflected, Andrew Blossom said.
Along with the Blossoms, who are white, Dan Auman and Douglas Anning round out the board.
Living landmarks
The first class of resident artists arrived in 2021 to stay in Nancy Blossom's cottage: Kansas City poet Glenn North, then Los Angeles-based writer X.C. Atkins; both have acted as consultants to the advisory board since. Author and visual artist Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, also from Kansas City, visited in 2022, as did Pinson.
In her presentation last month, Holloway's embodied words underlined one of Persimmon Creek's truest purposes.
"She’s a real believer that small steps help people understand each other. This is just a small step," Nancy Blossom said.
The program places no bounds on the work cultivated while in Arrow Rock, asking only that artists attend a welcome dinner and give one public presentation. Lawrence's residency is focused on "an autoethnographic essay about my family's ancestral home place," he said on the program's website.
"This essay will consider my own journey towards understanding, the history of midwestern Black townships, and the dispossession of Black land," he added. "I hope to use my time in Arrow Rock to think deeply and write about what it means to lose your home and what it means to fight to regain it."
And together, resident artists and community members encounter history that's both specific to Arrow Rock and mirrors the greater story of American race relations, Andrew Blossom said.
Slavery and racial violence mark that story, as does Reconstruction-era growth. By 1880, Blacks made up more than half Arrow Rock's population, according to Missouri State Parks, nurturing and creating culture.
Industrialization sounded the song of better jobs in larger cities, spurring an exodus across racial lines, Andrew Blossom said. And across America, around both world wars, Black residents "chose to leave places where they were really, truly oppressed," Pinson added.
So the Black presence in Arrow Rock and the surrounding area diminished, Andrew Blossom said, until citizens like Habernal refreshed those ties a couple of decades ago.
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Exchanging stories
Artist-audience interaction grows more reciprocal with each summer, and organizers bear glad witness "as those relationships continue, or as the time shows up in the work that was done there," Andrew Blossom said.
Pinson worked through a memoir project while in Arrow Rock, and spent an evening sharing her writing with a local book club. She met deeply engaged readers, who offered thoughtful feedback. Nancy Blossom recalled the moment as one of opening up; stories with very different details but a kindred spirit passed around the room, she said.
Organizers have active hopes for what the Persimmon Creek program can become, how it can affect not only Arrow Rock, but communities beyond. Nancy Blossom wondered aloud about the possibility of republishing Carter's namesake novel with fresh art from a future resident, and attention paid to where the dialogue and tone may or may not be appropriate.
Currently, the residency is invitation-only, a matter of keeping the project scalable and seeing if it would even work, organizers said. They hope to widen the process, further opening these exchanges.
They credit the residents of Arrow Rock for embracing this common experiment. Historical preservation is integral to the spirit of living in Arrow Rock, the Blossoms said, with venues like the Lyceum stoking that spirit.
Pinson appreciates the community's "honesty" about its racial history — "the good, the bad and the ugly," she said — burrowing into the truth and sharing what they find through narrative storytelling.
The community's annual celebration of Juneteenth is another heartening sign, Pinson said.
"I just hope that they continue to celebrate those holidays and memorial days where they can remember. I hope they continue to encourage people of color to come to Arrow Rock," she added.
America's history, unfortunately, is one of censoring minority voices, Andrew Blossom said. At a moment when the silencing seems acute, offering forums to cultivate stories really matters.
"In the current climate where omitting and distorting history is being commanded, the work so many of us are doing with Persimmon Creek is of extreme importance," board member Smith notes on the website.
As the storyteller expresses their own experience, hearers locates themselves somewhere within that testimony, Andrew Blossom said.
"Both those halves ... are very integral and important to making sense of the world, and all of us keeping our senses about us," he said.
Lawrence will give a reading at the Christian Church in Arrow Rock, 711 Main St., at 7 p.m. Saturday. After the reading and a Q&A session, J Love Band will perform at Brown's Chapel, 710 High St. Admission is free; register in advance at https://www.persimmoncreek.org/events.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Persimmon Creek artist residency keeps Arrow Rock's Black history at fore
