(calm funky music) - I list myself as an artist.

People try to give you these labels.

Now they coming in and telling these folks that they makers and all, I'm not a damn maker, ain't making nothing.

I'm documenting this particular culture that's in my head.

(calm funky music continues) (calm funky music continues) My name is Charles Smith and I'm a ceramic artist located in Mobile, Alabama.

Everything gotta be perfect.

You gotta have the perfect color, you gotta have the perfect balance.

You gotta have the perfect shape.

And that shape is normally, is a female form.

So you're going into that Afrocentric, I'm celebrating the female.

I had a situation with a organization here in Mobile.

Now, I was called and they said they wanted me to do a bicycle rack and I said, "I don't do bicycle racks".

When they came in for that first walkthrough, which was about maybe three months after, they said, "That's not a bicycle rack, is it?"

I said, "No, that is not a bicycle bicycle rack".

That's where the Three Sisters come in.

It ended up over at the city county building.

Everybody said it was pretty, it was cute, but nobody asked what the story was about.

So I just kept quiet because if I'd have told 'em that in the beginning, it never would have got done.

That it was three queens, three African Queens, three sisters of high esteem at the city county building.

Justice symbols from the Africans perspective.

When you start looking at the history of the abuse of Black women around the world, think about all that enslavement and people being snatched from the continent and mothers looking for their child and they died looking for their child.

All these ghosts, all these souls, that's out there looking for their children, just get stuck in my head.

And then you get the Dora.

We just took a African Shante, fertility doll image.

(calm funky music continues) (calm funky music continues) And then we did the Bantu knots, braids, because they used them when they was enslaved, those braids was a map.

It would tell you where to go if you needed to run.

So when you start looking at it, people start telling the story, then you start doing your own research, you'll see all this.

That's come from a civilized group that know how to communicate without words.

I paired with Frank 'cause I'm not a welder.

I had that design hand and knowing how clay worked and knowing how Frank worked, is that, can we transfer those textures, that look, of what I do into metal?

(calm funky music continues) (calm funky music continues) He amazed me with some things that he could do.

(calm funky music continues) Well, the significance of this piece is talking about Africatown and their roots from Benin, from Africa.

- Africatown is a settlement in north Mobile county where 32 of the 110 captive slaves from Benin, Dahomey, were bought to the United States.

It's the last known vestige of where a ship was landed.

(calm funky music continues) The ship has been found.

It validates the historical story that had been told secretly, if you can tell a story secretly.

- We did it in symbols.

So this is more the read and to the history of it.

You know when people can look at it, it don't have to have a direct meaning, but when you just see these symbols and the color variations and the texture, you gettin' that ancestral spirit.

These are things that you can communicate with.

You start getting into your real African roots, that in my case, I'm the artist of the state.

That's my job is to record what's going on for the next generation.

My thinking was how can I get an image in Mobile because it didn't have any Black image that I knew of.

The commissioner was Merceria Ludgood, set up this stuff for us to work on these different projects.

(calm funky music continues) (calm funky music continues) (calm funky music continues) Retirement?

I thought one time it was in the cards.

It's just a creative call and can't get rid of it.

My head is always spinning.

I got a lot to say, but you gotta find the people that's gonna listen.

(calm funky music concludes)