Art pieces like “Female” by Juara Cruz (pictured above) are on display at the Lockhart Gallery on Main Street. Cruz depicts her hand and her daughter’s hand together in front of the world to represent love between mother and daughter as well as the possibilities that await the two. The Lockhart Gallery exhibit, titled “Hand Picked : Art Expression of Farmworkers who Feed Us,” opened Oct. 23 (Jess Rivera/Staff Writer).
In collaboration with the Geneseo Migrant Center and New York Council of the Arts, a learning experience gallery opened on Oct. 23 in the Lockhart Gallery on Main Street. The gallery, “Hand-Picked: Art Expression of Farmworkers who Feed Us,” focuses on starting a dialogue about the people of migrant farm-work communities in Western New York.
The exhibit showcased 30 pieces that had been created by migrant workers when they participated in workshops run by the GMC. These workshops functioned as a part of the Creative Artists Migrant Program Services, which began about 40 years ago under Sylvia Kelly.
Current CAMPS coordinator Julia Stewart-Brittle ensures that the organization operates smoothly. After a long process of grant writing, instructors in writing and illustration received money to visit the homes of migrant workers.
Instructors then spend three months helping individuals learn the skills necessary to produce the charcoal self-portraits, stories with illustrations called retablos and mandalas of hands on black paper that are currently on display in the Lockhart Gallery.
Most contracted migrant farmworkers arrive in Western New York during the planting season and remain until the completion of harvest. Farmworkers thus spend about 10 months working 12-hour shifts with very few opportunities for breaks.
Most workers in the Geneseo region work in the large-scale dairy farms which operate year-round. Former farmworker and current activist for worker rights Librada Paz, who hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, is passionate about the cause she advocates for.
“Farmworkers have many skills but it’s so hard because of their long work hours,” Paz said. “Given the heavy strain on workers and their families, time for the arts are limited as well as engagement with other communities in western New York.”
The physical and social isolation of rural communities in the United States can be detrimental to the work ethic, intentions and character of many workers who came to the States for a “better opportunity,” according to many of the workers’ retablos.
This Lockhart Gallery exhibit exposes the mischaracterization of farmworkers in media, working as a mouthpiece for many to express the difficulties of their work experiences in New York State. Aside from community education, the workshops also offer an outlet for workers to process past experiences as well as create new ones. Stewart-Brittle noted that this process was healing and emotional, recounting one particular experience that she had with an emerging artist and her young daughter.
“Every time the mother was practicing, [her daughter] would put her hand down and want her mother to trace her hand,” Stewart-Brittle said. “[In one art piece] before drawing the world in the background … [the daughter] just naturally put her hand inside her mother’s.”
This interaction led to the main graphic on the poster advertising the exhibit in which one artist creates a mandala which represents her love for her child and the possibilities that the world has for the two of them.
In recent years, this program has experienced a slash in funding. Many migrant workers from Latin America are vulnerable in the rural communities of the United States without the opportunity to share their experiences.
Near the end of the gallery opening, visitors were prompted to fill out blank “Muchas Gracias” cards to express to the gallery’s migrant artists how they may have impacted visitors. Many workers had to miss the opening of the gallery due to lack of opportunities for traveling beyond where they currently live.
The exhibit will continue to run through Dec. 7 and gallery hours are 1 to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and 1 to 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.