I recently took part in a community art project in St. Petersburg,
Florida, where I now live. With Maria Saraceno, a local sculptor and
activist artist, I received a grant from the Pinellas County Arts
Council to make biweekly trips over a five-month period to a local bus
stop across the street from a major hotel. There, we conducted
interviews with people we met. Exchanges took place primarily with
hotel workers who relied on the bus to commute. We videotaped and
photographed, and we provided snacks, cold drinks and hand massages to
the workers in an effort to cater to and welcome the people upon whom
the tourist beach economy depends. We feel that the
contributions of these people to the community of St. Pete Beach are
often unrecognized and that these workers are thought of as outsiders,
though without them an economy in this area would be unsustainable.
In addition to local workers, the hotel employed many international
guest workers, including a significant number of Jamaicans on
nine-month visas. We became quite friendly with several of the
Jamaican women and have since held social gatherings together outside
the bus stop. These women were able to attend the art opening for the
show, titled "Willful Encounters (at a bus stop)" which took place on
August 18th at The Studio @ 620, a venue for many types of community
art in St. Petersburg.
In addition to photography and video, the Willful Encounters project
relied on Maria's sculpting skills. We installed a
three-sided screen of folded sheets, towels and pillows made to
resemble the white bus shelter where the interviews took place.
Projecting video of a hand massage on the back and the interviews on
the front of this, they captured the difficulty we had in forging these
connections with a video of the bus itself providing an ambient
soundscape in the gallery. Headphones were provided for people to
listen to the interviews. Photographs created a "quilt" on one wall,
with crochet thread outlining the squares. Also on display were long
strips of crocheted fabric. These were created at the bus stop while
we waited for people to emerge from the hotel. Originally created as a
symbol of the long journeys made by many workers each day, in some
cases two or more hours, these also came to represent the transmission
of information and cultures.
To hear more about this project including the technical challenges and
how they got all those sheets, tune in to Tampa public radio WMNF's
online archives at http://www.wmnf.org/programs/grid. We were
invited to speak on the Friday, August 18th episode of "Art in Your
Ear" hosted by DJ JoEllen Schilke, a supporter of local art in the
Tampa Bay area.
Later in September, I will be leaving the Tampa area to pursue another
of my interests, an MA/PhD program titled "Gender and
Identity in the Middle East" at the University of Exeter, England. I
plan to examine what the history of Middle Eastern dance can tell us
about shifting social values over time and across cultures.
Sadie Roosa ('06), of Columbia, Maryland, is part of a small but
growing group: She is a second generation Simon's Rocker. Her
mother, Heidi Vornbrock Roosa, attended in 1985.
Willful Encounters (at a bus stop)
For Chinese Language and Asian Studies, he put $500 toward a production
of a play to be performed in Chinese by intermediate and advanced
Chinese language students. He and his students produced a Chinese
language play for the first time last semester, but he said, "With
increased resources, we can stage a fuller, more intricate production.
The timing is excellent, for 2007 marks the 100th anniversary of the
modern Chinese theater, making this the perfect year to expand this
unique feature of our Chinese language program."
The kick-off to the year was the Simon's Rock Weekend—Community
Service Invasion, held Sept. 15 through 17. Participants worked in
pairs to lead various service events, all of which focused on the
Simon's Rock community. Volunteer opportunities included management of
a student Open Gym night, Campus Clean-Up, Daniel Arts Center concert
help, Community Garden Harvest, a picnic dinner, and the first
installments of the Hill House mural artwork. The weekend was a huge
success, and the amount of student participation and collaboration will
surely fuel our upcoming projects as well.
