Weta Digital's R. Christopher White on Black History: Making Our Place
R. Christopher White, provided by
Feb. 27, 2021
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I’ve always been fascinated with the history of spaces, knowing there are stories encapsulated in a place. How one can enter a room and receive cues to all that has happened there. As I reflect on Black History Month, I think of the pioneering work of those that came before and the movement of history and culture through these spaces.
My father programmed computers by day, a woodworker in the evening. It isn’t by accident that my chosen profession is visual effects, a mixture of computer science and art. He would wake the kids up early on Saturday mornings. Early enough for morning cartoons, but not so late that Soul Train was coming on. He’d sit at the end of my bed to showing me the newest piece of wood he found. “This is dogwood. It will be perfect for Ebenezer.” At that time, he was designing and building podiums and railings for the new Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Fort Washington, Maryland. He’d hold the piece, repeatedly flip it over and over, tracing the grain’s route, examining the knots, deducing its history.