When Ali Carter’s father passed away in 2016, she embarked on a journey of discovery. After a DNA test confirmed family rumors that her paternal grandfather was a light-skinned Black man who had changed his name and passed for a white person, Ali’s thoughts on race evolved. In this episode of the WWN podcast, Kate and Ali talk about American culture and its understanding of race, education and humanity, and how Ali explores these themes in her artwork. Ali also shares her thoughts on the local arts scene and her big hopes for its future. Listen now!
Transcript
Ali Rivera: I am Ali Rivera, a ladysmith, a jewelry maker, and a genealogy enthusiast.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community. My guest today is Ali Rivera, born in Richmond, Indiana. Ali attended Richmond Community Schools and graduated from Eaton High School in 1991. In 1996, she graduated from Indiana University with a continuing studies degree with an emphasis on metals and cultural anthropology. In 2020, she began to work with metal again after putting it on the shelf for over 25 years. Ali and her husband, Rafi, are the parents of two daughters, Sydney and Taytem. When she’s not working in her home studio, Ali is busy working on her family’s ancestry.
Welcome, Ali. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
Ali Rivera: I’m honored to just speak with you today, Kate.
Kate Jetmore: I want to start with the last thing you said in your introduction, which has to do with your family genealogy. I actually think that when we were scheduling this interview, we were scheduling around a trip that you were making to meet even more of your newly discovered cousins. And I think this entire journey began when your dad passed away in 2016. Is that right?
Ali Rivera: That is correct. I have always been interested in family genealogy, but it really did hit me when my dad passed. I can trace my mom’s history with great detail, my dad’s maternal line with great detail, but my dad’s father’s lineage is a brick wall, and I really wanted answers. So in 2017, after dad passed, I did an ancestry DNA test, and there was always chatter about my dad’s ethnicity and about his father. So when the test came back, I was not surprised with the results. It clarified the hidden African ethnicity that was always talked about. So it was a long journey to put the pieces together. But finally, after sending lots of messages to DNA matches, I finally had a lot of feedback.
And then, in January of 2019, a cousin of mine, she had her genealogist contact me, and sent me a photo of my grandfather, and told me that his name was not Ted Carter but Taft Clark, and that he had been living his life and passing as a white man. And so when I saw the picture, I was speechless because it was literally like looking at my father. And I was happy but sad because I couldn’t share that news with my dad. He’d always had searched for a Ted Carter, and with no luck.
Kate Jetmore: Do you know why he changed his name?
Ali Rivera: I think that goes with the story of the time in the era. If someone was so light-skinned that they could pass for white, they often chose that choice, and they would leave the town where they grew up in and which in his case was Asheville, North Carolina, and he had more opportunity to live as a white man. And there was a lot of colorism involved with things like that. If you’re too dark or if you’re light, you get the better jobs back then. So there’s all this history that a lot of white America doesn’t understand.
And so this research that I did was not only to learn about my own family history, but it really taught me how to relearn the truth about American history and all the nuances when it comes to caste systems and colorism within the black community itself. So at first, when I found that out, I was angry that like, oh my gosh, you passed as a white guy. You gave up your African lineage. But ironically, in a lot of the cases when people do leave their area, change their name, and live their life as a completely different person, they completely disassociate themselves with their black families.
In his case, he would still continue communicating with all of his relatives from the area and go to family reunions and funerals, but he never brought his white wife or his other children. But my dad didn’t grow up knowing him, but ironically, he did have children with black women and other white women, but with the black women, he kept his name Taft Clark, but with the white women, he kept his name Ted Carter. So it’s a very interesting dynamic. And my story, honestly, is not as unusual as most would think when you start to dive into all of this. It’s true in the case of a lot of families when they find out really their true history.
Kate Jetmore: Well, and you mentioned, it’s not just my family history, it’s the history of America, which is fascinating. And you also said a lot of white people, or maybe most white people don’t know about this history, don’t know about these nuances. And I can say for sure that as a white American, there is so much that I’m unaware of and that I’m curious about, but don’t really know how to ask about and still be respectful, and who would I ask and in what context? So that’s one reason I’m so glad you’re here today. What about the line between, so when we talk about your family history and we talk about America’s history, there’s another point on that line, which is Indiana, which is Wayne County, which is where you grew up, right?
Ali Rivera: Correct, correct.
Kate Jetmore: So I’m curious, given all the things you’ve learned and discovered about your own race and how that’s changed throughout your life and throughout this process, do you see yourself differently now in the context of our community?
Ali Rivera: That’s a really good question. That, well, in short answer, no. I don’t see myself differently. I feel like I have a sense of clarity more than anything. I do think differently. I will say that this journey has made it more abundantly clear that we live in parallel universes, and it’s still clearly very black and white in America, and notably here locally. I feel like relations in Richmond haven’t always been horrible, but depending on who you ask. I think it’s tolerated more here in this area. I think that with the Quaker, I feel like there’s reasons why it’s not been really volatile necessarily. It could have been in other local areas in Indiana, but it’s still very different as far as I see a lot of racism still in the school system, how teachers handle race. But as far as myself, I don’t feel different because, really, society is going to see me how they see me, and it’s solely on skin color.
So now, when I go to these family reunions, which have been amazing, I’m the lightest one in the room, but they’ve accepted me because they know my lineage now. Now I don’t know how that would be if I was married in and I was just all white. I mean, there’s still a lot of things that people walk on eggshells to discuss about race. A lot of white people, and here in Indiana, here in Richmond, in my own family, this doesn’t affect them. So they don’t really want to know. They were brought up a certain way, and they feel like everything was always fine, that blacks and whites got together.
And yes, they might have went to the skate on different nights, but their capacity to not want to feel guilt is to just suppress it and not talk about it because what’s happened 60 years ago, 150 years ago, is still really the essence is still around us everywhere we go here. And I think that if people really want to know the truth, they have to really open up their heart and mind. But a lot of folks, Kate, honestly, don’t really want to even touch it. They don’t want to go there because it doesn’t affect them.
Kate Jetmore: Right. And I also wonder how many people are choosing consciously not to ask, not to inform themselves, and how many people are just completely unaware that there’s anything to be learned.
Ali Rivera: Absolutely. And I guess until people actually get out of their own towns, their own homes, or travel, both you and I have lived abroad. You still live abroad, you’ve traveled, you’re immersed in culture and art, and different things. Until people even touch that, they really have no clue. And I see that in all my research that I’ve done that America, especially because I’ve been really keen and aware of the way race and ethnicity has played a part in America and abroad, and America is still very walking on eggshells with things. And now, even more so, I think it’s become more complicated since COVID and since social media. But there’s so many things that my kids don’t learn in school about true history. And I don’t care if it’s about indigenous people or certain wars, it’s very one-sided. It’s not the truth.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, tentative, right?
Ali Rivera: It is, yes. And usually it’s trying to make white people not feel so bad about the choices they’ve done, and that’s crazy.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah. What do you think your role might be? Because I sort of see you as a bridge, it seems like you’re in a really interesting and powerful position to engage in dialogue with both races.
Ali Rivera: I’m hoping that something transgresses out of this because I’ve never really felt like I fit in. So I feel like I have, and it’s helped me deal with the reactions of people on both sides because I can’t say that it’s been positive on both sides, black and white side. There’s been a lot of folks of African lineage that I’ve had DNA matches that don’t believe that were related, that don’t want to know me, which is fine. And as well as on the white side that once they found out this information, are like, Oh, you’re one of them. And I’m like, What? So it goes back down to just education and humanity, really.
You can look all over the world and see how things have been, just people treated certain ways. And so the truth is that America has a really horrific history when it comes to the way they’ve treated people, especially enslaved people, indigenous people. And white people need to really understand that they’ve been lied to all these years with a lot of the information that’s been taught to them, especially in order to see why people are the way they are today and why things are the way that they are today. People can’t have just a normal, genuine conversation without somebody getting defensive.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah. Well, I wonder if what we need is something that goes beyond a conversation, something that goes beyond words. And that actually brings me to the next thing that I wanted to talk about with you, which is your art.
Ali Rivera: Yes, yes.
Kate Jetmore: You introduced yourself at the top of the show as a ladysmith.
Ali Rivera: Yes.
Kate Jetmore: You are a jewelry maker and your preferred medium is metal. So I guess I’d love to hear what ladysmith means to you and why you choose to define yourself that way.
Ali Rivera: Ladysmith, to me, was generally, when you think of a metal smith or a silversmith or goldsmith, you automatically usually think of a man, that it’s a male-dominated industry. And I have always been intrigued with the history of metal, how it’s extracted from the earth, and it’s processed and forged, and things. But I felt like there’s a really large group of ladies that are doing metal work, and I felt like it was sort of like a sexy term, ladysmith, in that we like fire and we like to hammer metal and stuff. So I just always prefer, I mean, I used to call myself a silversmith, but I do like to work in brass and copper and different things like that. So I just always go with ladysmith now.
Kate Jetmore: Well, it’s a great term. It’s a great term, and it’s very visceral and very visual. Talk to us about metal a little bit. Why metal and have you dabbled in other mediums?
Ali Rivera: I have. I have worked with clay, I’ve worked with fabric, textiles. I’ve done just about every medium, wood. I really enjoy doing the African and native Sequoia basketry, but metal is where my heart is. To me, I feel like it can be manipulated in ways, and then if I mess it up, I can just turn it into something else. I’m sure a potter feels that way about things, but there’s this intensity of working with metal and fire. The alchemy behind it all intrigues me. When I studied cultural anthropology, we dabbled a lot in as far as shamanisms and different, not shamanisms, shamanism, all over the world of how people that worked with metal were actually really high up there when it came to spiritual people in their communities and stuff. And so I’ve just always been really intrigued with it.
And I love how, especially ancient cultures and even today, that people can adorn themselves with something that came from the earth. And I really try to focus on using repurposed metals as well as found objects and things. That’s extremely important to me. I’m not interested in mass production. Really, I love doing one-of-a-kind pieces that have some symbolism to them.
Kate Jetmore: And do you see yourself bringing in all the discoveries that you’re making around your genealogy, around your race, and some of these themes that we’ve been talking about in the first half of our conversation? Do you see yourself bringing that into your art into your jewelry?
Ali Rivera: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. When I go into the studio, I’m sort of a free-form or freestyle artist. I never really know what I’m going to do when I go in there. And so nature and culture, obviously, play a huge role of what I’m attracted to as far as producing. But yes, it does, wholeheartedly.
Kate Jetmore: Well, talk to us a little bit about the other artists that you know and work with, and collaborate with in Wayne County and how you sort of got back into the scene. Because, as you mentioned, or as I mentioned in the intro, you did put this sort of thing on the back burner for many, many years.
Ali Rivera: I did.
Kate Jetmore: So talk to us a little bit about that.
Ali Rivera: So first, I have to say I’ve been extremely fortunate. My great-uncle is a goldsmith and had a jewelry business for years here in Richmond and as well as in St. Thomas. And so I remember seeing him work with metal, and so I was always intrigued to it. After college, I moved to New Orleans, and life happens. 25 years later, we’re coming into COVID. And it was just something that I was like, I need to express myself.
And so I obviously grew up around Terri Logan’s work here and being local from Richmond, and she’s a huge influence on me. She has been a mentor, a dear friend of mine. And so, just starting out a few years ago, I was just playing around, and in school I was always, I didn’t get good grades in my metal classes because I don’t sketch. I don’t even really measure. I just want to fabricate. Let me just do what I can do. And so I was always taught in school that you’ve got to do work that needs to be in a museum. Well, that wasn’t interesting to me. I wanted to just do stuff. So Terri had always said, “Do what you do.” And so a couple of years later, I’m selling my pieces, and we started doing a thing called Art x 3 that she came up with.
And it’s three ladysmiths, three Hoosiers. Why can’t I think of the third? That’s crazy. Three women. Three women, of course, three women. But so we’re on our third year this year, this fall we’ll be doing another jewelry show. So that’s super exciting. Women supporting women. The art scene in Richmond is phenomenal, but Ram and IU East, they do a phenomenal job with programming for kids and youth, and IU East with Palette to Palate. But I’m hoping that down the road that we can have more collectiveness, there’s so many great artists in town that should get the notoriety, and we should have a juried annual art show, festival here. So we’ve been talking.
Kate Jetmore: So talk more about that because I did want to ask you, what do you envision, what would you like to see in the future or what would you like to help work on to bring into being? So talk more about that.
Ali Rivera: That’s something we’ve talked a lot about. And Bailey Mosey-Hoffman is the other Art by three other than Terri and I. And we’ve talked about, in the future, putting together some sort of a festival, a juried sort of festival. And so there’s going to be a lot of preparation in that, but you’ll just have to wait and see. Things are sort of in the works. The talking stages are there, but we want to do it right.
Kate Jetmore: Well, and also, one of the things that popped out of your words for me when you were talking about when you first started working with metal was playing around and how that’s what your heart wants to do. That’s your preferred method of engaging with the material is to play around. And I hope our listeners hear that as strongly as I do, because so often when we hear someone interviewed on the radio or on a podcast, we think, Oh, well, they obviously know what they’re doing and I don’t. And a lot of times we don’t know what we are doing, and we’re just mucking around, and something cool happens, right?
Ali Rivera: I’ve always wanted to have, a lot of the cities that I’ve lived in all over the country over all the years always had co-ops where you could pay a daily fee and go use a kiln or go use a rolling press. Because one of the biggest things with a lot of artists is the equipment. We are starving artists. We sell a piece to buy more metal. And so we’ve talked a lot about not only just having a juried festival but some sort of a cooperative to where people could come and do the plane and try things.
But one thing I am excited about is, and again, it’s completely out of my comfort zone, is I’m going to be doing a one-day metals workshop with Preble County Arts this fall, and Bailey is going to help with me, and I’d never consider myself a teacher, so I’m go with the flow. You don’t have to follow the rules. Bailey is by the books. So I think that for the students that are going to come to this workshop, they’ll appreciate having someone very meticulous like Bailey and someone like, That mark is fine. It’s good. It’s meant to be there. Leave it there.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, that’ll be the best of both worlds. Well, I’m really excited to hear more about that, and I’m sure our listeners will too. And Ali, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time. I loved hearing about your family. I loved hearing about your artwork, your jewelry-making, and I want to wish you and your family all the best.
Ali Rivera: Well, thank you so much for having me, Kate.