Professor aims to help turn Syracuse into art powerhouse

By: Nic Corbett

Posted: 9/8/06

Seeing the crumbling edifices of Europe's glorious past reminded artist Carrie Mae Weems of the once-thriving industrial cities of upstate New York.

"Once you start to see city after city after city that has fallen into historic ruin - that has actually been a ruin for 2,000 years - you start to understand that certain things don't come back," Weems said. "There is something called ruins, that people change, that populations move, that they abandon, that they move on."

The former College of Visual and Performing Arts artist-in-residence drew a parallel to Syracuse, noting how greatly the city has changed since the '50s and '60s.

"While we may lament it at our own moment, because it's sad to see something die, we also know that things don't always come back because we want them to, no matter how hard we work for them," Weems said. "I think that's a very interesting lesson. It's a lesson not only for Syracuse, it's a lesson for the United States."

Weems began her residency in spring 2005, working on her art and delivering lectures to Syracuse University students and community members, but her tenure was cut short when she was awarded the Rome Prize. The class she intended to teach that fall remained on hold until this semester.

The prize allowed her to participate in a fellowship for 11 months at the American Academy in Rome, where she studied the collapsing of states and building of empires and produced a film on Italian cinema.

Weems said Rome taught her how the arts could revitalize a city like Syracuse.

"(Rome is) in ruins but you can see Caravaggio, you can see Raphael, you can see a painting that will drop you to your knees," she said. "That's how powerful it is. And people from all over the world are coming to that place to see it. Well, can we convince people to come to Syracuse to see what we produce? Can we become that sort of artistic powerhouse that says there's a reason to come to the city because we're doing something important here?"

Social Studies 101, Weems' class, will explore these themes this semester. Students of all majors are welcome to enroll in the course, where they will create art that represents local ethnic and cultural communities using a number of media. But don't enroll in the course if you don't like to test your boundaries.

"They have to be willing to get out of their comfort zone," Weems said of the students in her class. "They have to be willing to leave this campus, they have to be willing to go out and explore the city of Syracuse in a way that most students don't."

Dressed in chic black and wearing glasses with a rectangular tortoise-shell rim, Weems gestures excitedly and her voice takes on a roller coaster ride of octaves when she talks about the projects she has in mind for her students this semester.

Fresh from her trip, she sprinkles her speech with Italian words, asking "Capito?" when she's unsure if someone understands an idea she's expressing.

Weems said she hopes one of her students will choose to explore how the young people living in the projects on the South Side view the university.

"It's just right up the hill but it seems like a thousand miles away, I think," Weems said. "Why is that? So, I thought it would be very, very hip to have a walking tour for students from down in those neighborhoods. It'd be like a podcast."

The walking tours would be called "soundscapes," she said.

Another project Weems envisions is called "If Looks Could Kill," which would explore the economics of the hip-hop fashion that she sees portrayed as a threat to the dominant culture.

"We know that hip hop, of course, is making a killing around the world, so the money attached to it is enormous," she said. "I think it's a question of economics, but how?"

Jeff Hoone, Weems' husband, said Weems has taught similar courses at Harvard and Williams College, where she brought in students majoring in different subjects and had them focus on one theme or issue.

"What all good artists do is ask really good questions, and that's what she does as an artist and a teacher, asking really good questions and then seeing where the answers come from," said Hoone, who is also the director of Light Works. "A lot of times they come from unexpected places, but you sort of have to take that leap, investigating what the possibilities are."

Weems hopes to use new advances in technology to publicly present her students' work form this semester. Students will treat the community as their gallery space.

"I can create a piece and put it on an iPod and you can come to Light Works, pick it up, take it out and experience something with it," Weems said. "Maybe it might be portable LCD screens that one is using in order to sort of map something. There are all these ways. We can use video projections on the sides of walls. We can do a whole lot. So we don't necessarily have to be simply and only anchored to museums, to the four walls."

The returning artist takes the same approach with the exhibition of her own work.

"She loves to experiment with different ways of presenting work," Hoone said. "Photographs don't just sit on the wall sometimes. She'll make them on huge pieces of cloth and integrate sound with them."

Hoone said Weems' work, mostly photography, has been on exhibit at many museums and art galleries in Europe and the United States. They usually depict power structures in society - what they might mean and how they function.

"She's always been interested in issues of power struggle, issues of representation, between men and women, between government, between people of different ethnic backgrounds," he said.

With Weems' energy and experience, Hoone predicted enrolled students will remember her class for years.

"She is a very dynamic individual and she is going to get the best out of the students," Hoone said. "She really has a way of uniquely engaging students in a very meaningful way."

LaToya Frazier, a third-year graduate student studying art photography, said Weems is the perfect artist to model herself after and collaborate with. Frazier, who is enrolled in Weems' class, has already worked on similar projects, photographing Syracuse residents who are raising their grandchildren, as well as the Sudanese refugee community.

"As an artist," said Frazier, "it's my social responsibility to make work that engages the community in which I reside."