Mapping Within: The Making of a University-community Arts Partnership

Mary Guerrero and her after-school writing group at Oliver Elementary School in Lawrence, Mass., collaborated with artists from Harvard University to explore crossing between cultures. Click here for a slideshow of images from this project. All photos by Helen Burns

In what language do we remember? How does our shift from one space to another inform who we are at any given moment? Which imagined and lived borders do we cross as we journey through life? Juan Flores, author of “From Bomba to Hip-Hop,” writes, “geography is the richest metaphorical field for the politics of linguistic and cultural breaking: the contact between here and there permeates the idiom, from everyday speech to the lingo of popular songs to the twists and turns of bilingual poetry” (2003).

In attempting to understand our place and purpose in the world, almost everyone experiences the feeling of being “in between,” neither here nor there, ”of occupying an interstitial space that was not fully covered by the recognizable traditions from which you came,” (Bhabba, 1994). In an era of heightened globalization, this is especially true for those who literally cross national and transnational borders.

Community Artists at Harvard – In the Space between Theory and Practice

As artists, we recognized the ways in which borders serve as an organizing metaphor to grapple with identity while working as community artists in East Palo Alto, Calif., and Chicago, Ill. And we had to confront our own borders when we arrived in Cambridge, Mass., for a year of graduate studies in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We did not anticipate feeling so disconnected from the communities that had inspired our return to school.

Within the first few months of rigorous coursework, we longed to stay connected without losing our scholarly focus. Deep in often poetic, intellectually stimulating theoretical spaces, we missed working hands-on as community artists and educators. With very little time to look up from readings and research, we began to experience the infamous disconnect between theory and practice. What good was any of this gorgeous theory without recognizing the way it interplays with life beyond academic borders?

In Puerto Rico, a Seed

Rachel McIntire, muralist and multimedia artist, thought about the possibility of connecting in the Boston area while attending “Culture at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University. The breathtaking landscape of Puerto Rico’s Viejo San Juan inspired tireless reflection, and the conference suggested connections between locations near and far. The crossroads in mind were three thousand miles away in Lawrence, Mass.

Earlier that year, friend and curator Helen Burns of the Essex Art Gallery had invited Rachel to create and install an art exhibition. In response to formative ideas on transnational migration and cultural crossroads, Rachel wanted to develop a university-community arts partnership in Lawrence. Located 30 miles north of Boston, Lawrence used to be the textile capital of the United States. Over time, this city of just over 70,000 has become home to many immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The city’s population as of 2000 consisted of 59.7 percent Latinos in contrast to the state of Massachusetts’ 6.8 percent Latino population (U.S. Census, 2000).

Rachel figured that Lawrence youth knew a lot about “cultural crossroads,” and she could not think of a better way to use the Essex Art Gallery than to collaborate. Helen introduced Rachel to a remarkable teacher named Mary Guerrero at Oliver Elementary School. She and her colleagues at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference responded enthusiastically to Rachel’s invitation. Rachel’s idea was to invite university artists to lead a day of workshops to which they would respond and then exhibit the work in the gallery.

Mapping the Mapping Within Project

“Essence of a person can only be known in a living relationship…the ‘I’ can not exist without the 'thou’” – Martin Buber, philosopher, 1957

With Mary Guerrero and her after-school writing group of ten students on board, Rachel put out a call to artists within the Arts in Education program: Nyasha Warren, a visual artist and scientist from Panama City; Dana Caffe-Glen, a theater artist from Washington D.C.; Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, a poet and writer from Chicago; and Marit Dewhurst, a doctoral candidate from Ann Arbor. They attended informal meetings to design the workshop. We had little time to spare; meetings coincided with papers, presentations and readings, and yet our ideas reached a confluence through our dialogues.

We talked feverishly about the ways in which theoretical readings on identity, globalization and the arts informed the work we’d done previously in communities, museums and schools. Questions like Who am I? Where do I come from? and Where am I going? guided our curricular design. We talked about navigating myriad life paths and negotiating borders and boundaries along the way, and then we created a workshop that engaged a call-and-response dialogue about these ideas.

Educator and activist John Gardner describes identity as the assurance of knowing and being known, and he calls the loss of identity a failure in relationships between the individual and society. In a society where transmigration is increasingly more prevalent and media images pervade daily lives, the path of identity has become multifarious, even generating perplexing questions that challenge notions of a core self.

The idea of a map emerged as the ultimate metaphor for the journey of understanding self as influenced by fluid geographical, spiritual, political, academic, social and emotional landscapes. We decided to use maps as a central part of the art making because it was both visually and metaphorically powerful. By sharing notions of both interior and exterior maps, we hoped to express identity as organic as opposed to fixed. We also hoped that Lawrence artists would begin to notice the ways in which they construct and narrate their own stories and that identity is often in constant conversation with place and space.

During the Mapping Within workshop, young artists would compose an interpretive dialogue about identity through an exploration of text, performance, world maps, audio and photography. Later, we would respond by ordering, assembling and incorporating their work. This didactic – a call-and-response interaction – was meant to mimic similar paths of negotiation of self and other as described by Martin Buber in defining the essence of a person.

Let the Mapping Begin

On a cold Saturday morning in January, we rode the Metra Line to Lawrence. Helen Burns greeted us at the station and drove us to the Essex Art Center, located on the first floor of a deep-red brick warehouse. We prepared the workshop space and when Mary Guerrero and her students arrived we welcomed all the nervous energy.

We began in a circle with a physical-theater warm-up to connect with our bodies, breath and memory. Amanda led an exercise in which students took on the “shapes” of different emotions and then were guided to transform those shapes in slow motion. Rooting these experiences in the body invited them to consider how we carry our stories inside us. Stories are not bound to a specific place but rather find homes in the muscle and blood of who we are collectively and individually at any given moment.

During an informal discussion about memory and moving, migration and change, we identified significant personal memories. One student shared a tumultuous move from the Domincan Republic to the United States. Another expressed her fear in switching schools. Each related to the idea of “crossroads” and became aware of how those changes informed identity. When asked to “locate” these memories in the body, each found their own way to interpret the ways in which memory hides in the folds of our bodies and minds.

To further the metaphor, the artists made full-body cut outs of their bodies using butcher paper and maps that they later manipulated through collage and text. Body mapping led to intensive creative writing on movement and change. They responded to poet Kenneth Koch’s classic invitation to complete the phrase “I used to be…but now I am…” As experienced writers in Guerrero’s after-school writing group, they were encouraged to think metaphorically about how they might experiment with that phrase. They wove in concepts of feeling and emotion, space and sensation.

After the students wrote and read their work aloud, Rachel assisted them as they broke into pairs to help one another embellish their body-maps. They were asked to visually locate their text within their bodies. This “inner cartography” makes visible the interior shifting from one mental space to the next. Tyler located his grandmother’s death in the pit of his stomach. Raymond located a plane ride from Puerto Rico to the United States in the middle of his head. While students worked intensely in pairs with their “body maps,” Amanda recorded students reading their favorite poetic lines. Students also took digital snapshots of one another as “portraits of the present tense.”

The Spanish word “grabar” means to record. The grabadora is the device used to record. During our Mapping Within workshop, each of us became grabadoras, attempting to perceive and interpret the nuances of sensory expressions. In the dimensions of sound, energy, movement and visual expression we worked through the afternoon with an impressive openness.

Inquire

We met again with Mary and Helen at the Essex Art Center to sort through multiple body-maps, text, photos and audio. Rachel responded visually to the body-maps and designed regal golden frames for students’ self-portraits. Amanda and Mary read through the poetry and selected strong lines, which were then translated to large-scale acetate paper in grand, cursive black writing. During the day, we returned to theory and dialogue to determine the best way to exhibit our work.

We met once more to install Mapping Within in the gallery. Large-scale writing was hung to line the parameters of the space closest to the ceiling and lowest to the floor. In the space between, body-maps nestled close to one another, frozen in the shapes they’d made to express the “feeling of the change” they described in their writing. A modest description of the project was featured at the entrance and recordings of their personal memories looped as visitors entered and explored the space.

The opening night of Mapping Within buzzed with curiosity and pride as university artists, Lawrence students, their parents, teachers, and friends attended to celebrate and explore the exhibit. Mary encouraged her students to set up an installation of personal objects and artifacts. Their self-portraits adorned one wall while their text and body-maps filled the other walls. Students served as enthusiastic tour guides for inquisitive guests.

Our exhibition invited viewers to consider notions of time and space. In attempting to understand the influences that guide and define us, we become more aware of the individual moments that shape our lives. Our navigation through life’s meandering paths and landscapes depends on our willingness to recognizing that culture is neither stagnant nor shallow. We hoped our work would prompt the viewer to take a stance of respectful reflection while locating a memory within.

Transfer

Amazed with the success of Mapping Within, we considered future directions for the project. We didn’t want to believe it was over as we returned to loads of coursework and mountainous academic expectations. We started to wonder, “What is the significance of this inquiry beyond the workshop and exhibition walls?” After experiencing these rich moments of cultural encounter and dialogue, what questions and conversations persist?

We wanted to continue meeting with these wonderful students to further explore generative questions of self, space and society. Time limits inhibited the ability to sustain an ongoing university-community partnership. Still, contributions and reactions from other university and community members propelled the project forward and fueled its evolution as a truly collaborative experience.

Reflections Renew

Serendipitously, the Mapping Within project became a touring exhibition! After a month in the Essex space, we decided to install it in the Longfellow Hall gallery at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, offering exuberance and light to a slightly stale and often silent space. The exhibit flowed left to right and allowed the viewers to closely examine the artwork.

Harvard colleagues marveled at ideas translated into action. With such wonderful feedback, we really wanted our Lawrence friends to experience their artwork in a different space. Friend and supporter Josiane Peltier of DRCLAS had attended the opening night and suggested we continue the partnership by inviting Lawrence artists to Harvard University, the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and finally, the School of Education, where they could view their work, have a poetry reading, and engage in critical dialogue about the Mapping Within experience.

With generous support from DRCLAS, Oliver students arrived on Harvard’s campus for an art extravaganza. Josiane greeted us at the Sackler Musuem to participate in an interactive tour. Next, we walked as a group to the DRCLAS center to view thought- provoking photos by Jaime Avilar, a Columbian photographer whose work confronts homelessness. Over lunch, Jose Falconi, Associate Director of DRCLAS, engaged students in a dialogue about issues raised in the photos. Avilar’s work challenged Oliver students to think as activists. Instead of indifference, they expressed concern and compassion, volunteering the shoes off their feet to the homeless featured in Avilar’s photos.

Finally, our group headed to Harvard Graduate School of Education to view the exhibit in its new home. Everyone reacted to the differences and similarities between the two spaces, some approving of the change and others appreciating the gallery even more for its spaciousness and multidimensionality. They were pleased to see their work in a new space and some were simply excited to visit Harvard for the first time. Though they lived only 30 miles away, few had even considered the possibility. One girl exclaimed, “I’m going to Harvard when I get older!” as she scribbled notes in her notebook. When exploring new spaces, untapped parts of us emerge to respond to hidden possibilities.

The grand finale of the day occurred in an Ed. School classroom where artist Dana Caffe-Glen led dramatic theater exercises that encouraged self-expression and community building. Afterward, Oliver students read their poetry as Ed. School professors and students dropped in to catch some of our infectious energy. The day affirmed the power of the arts to connect diverse groups in the spirit of understanding and celebration. It also illustrated the ways in which theoretical concepts and ideas are lived through the everyday experiences that shape and define our lives. Graduate students steeped in theoretical abstractions appreciated the tangible nature of the project exhibited in the hallway gallery. Adam Sawyer, an Ed.D. candidate at Harvard told us, “Your exhibit is fabulous and refreshingly relevant in that it communicates to kids and educators that expression, questioning, and meaning-making are central pieces of ’education.'”

Steve Seidel, director of the Arts in Education program, viewed the exhibit and wrote: “Thank you in the grandest sense…The Mapping Within work has reached and touched unexpected spaces….the construction and reconstruction has served to entertain questions forming a documented dialog for all involved. It is full of intuition and formative ideas. I would be very interested in tracing other significant connections, traditions and extensions. Tissue, joint, scabs that connect each of us to ourselves and our experience.”

The Inner Cartographer

We wondered what further dreams this project could inspire. Rachel describes Mapping Within as “a call and response: transcending time in space, in time and space.” Using our imagination in the manner espoused by Appadurai, we began “staging action not only to escape,” but to create. After graduation, Amanda returned to Chicago to work as a poet in the schools and Rachel landed in Mexico City where she currently resides and works as a community artist with migrant youth.

The heart of Mapping Within continues with respect to the growing number of migrants, immigrants and refugees that enter the United States. In addition to immigrant and refugee populations, the U.S. has a growing number of migrant workers that enter and exit the U.S. border often several time a year, and border relations are clearly tenuous and rife with conflict. The U.S. education system currently serves over 20,000 Mexican youth that migrate annually from throughout Mexico (Census 2000).

The inner cartographer in each of us discovers new and worn paths in search of an ever-changing self. And as our paths cross on this great and tangled human map, mapping within allows us to map without, to traverse the unknowns of human experience with a sense of justice and compassion at every turn.

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She teaches poetry in public elementary schools and currently lives in Chicago, Ill.

Rachel McIntire is a multimedia artist originally from Northern California who has been engaged in the study of art, culture and education for over ten years. She lives in Mexico City, where she is working with artist Pedro Reyes and local organizations whose mission is to support the healthy development of local street children.

REFERENCES

Aparduria, Arun (1996). Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

Bhabba, Homi (1994). Interviewed by Paul Thompson: Between Identities: Migration & Identity, London: Oxford University Press.

Buber, Martin (1958). I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Flores, Juan (2000) From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.

Original CAN/API publication: December 2005