Revolution in art is no exception. But instead of making the “apple” fall, Syracuse’s ArtRage Gallery has been an orchard for artists to hang work bearing the fruit of revolt that challenges the mainstream. Since opening in 2008 with an exhibition of artwork by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, ArtRage, 505 Hawley Ave., has used not just art, but also film, music and performance to engage the community in their creed. It reads:
“ArtRage is no ordinary gallery. Its mission is to exhibit progressive art that inspires resistance and promotes social awareness, supports social justice, challenges preconceptions and encourages cultural change. It doesn’t stop there. Each exhibit is in collaboration with one or more community organizations in an effort to expand the traditional viewing ‘audience,’ to offer support and become a catalyst for organized action among working people.”
The concept of the gallery was derived by the building’s owner Dik Cool, also president of the Syracuse Cultural Workers, a progressive publishing outlet founded in 1982 that sells calendars, postcards and T-shirts that convey messages of peace, sustainability and social justice. Ruth Putter, a local activist, feminist and photographer who has had work displayed at the Everson Museum of Art and Light Work Gallery, provided financial backing for ArtRage, and the space was named in honor of her late husband—hence, the Norton Putter Gallery.
But there’s no mean green to be earned for ArtRage, as they spurned capitalism and decided to go the way of the non-profit. They operate under the umbrella of the Community Outreach and Resources for the Arts (CORA), run by activists, educators and artists who comprise the board of directors and seek to support and encourage educational cultural activities and events in greater Syracuse while also bringing non-local exhibits that otherwise might not be hung here.
“All of our work has a theme or issue of social or cultural change,” says Kim McCoy, community engagement organizer at ArtRage. “The mission is based on showcasing progressive art that expands the traditional audience of art and makes it accessible to everyone. We also partner with different community organizations for a lot of exhibitions and we use art to promote these local groups. I think art can help bridge gaps for new ideas and help people see things in a different perspective.”
For the exhibition Boys & Girls, that ran from March 6 to April 24, artists Diane Menzies and Mary Giehl presented work to challenge the viewer to look deeper into images depicting hardship in children. For that exhibit, ArtRage partnered with the McMahon/Ryan Child Advocacy Site, a non-profit organization located at 509 W. Onondaga St., whose pursuit is to end child abuse through education and intervention. Information about McMahon/Ryan was dispersed throughout the gallery during the exhibition, connecting art and community.
“We’re always trying to make people aware of the many community organizations in our area and give people ways to get involved,” continues McCoy. “For the Breach of Peace exhibition earlier this year, the Media Unit {local teen theater troupe} did a piece on civil rights, and we are always looking to partner with groups of any kind that relate to an exhibition.” ArtRage is currently partnered with Rarely Done Productions for the gay-themed musical Falsettos; after its opening weekend at Jazz Central, the show moves to ArtRage for two performances on Friday, May 21, and Saturday, May 22, 8 p.m.
The gallery’s current exhibit, A Tender Record, features photographer Marjory Wilkins’ work focusing on Syracuse’s extinct 15th Ward, which was razed for the early 1960s construction of Interstate 81, as well as other photos of historical reference to the African American community and Syracuse at large. To coincide with the exhibition’s closing reception on Thursday, May 27, 7 to 9 p.m., ArtRage joins forces with the South Side Initiative, which will screen a new documentary titled Syracuse’s 15th Ward and Beyond as a companion piece.
Neighborhood Watch
The 15th Ward that was effaced from the city’s landscape while I-81 was under construction displaced nearly 1,300 people, mostly African Americans, but also smaller ethnic groups. At the same time, bisecting the city broke social networks of families, friends and neighbors, and forced everyone to reset their daily planet routine. The residents were offered little help, and were told to hit the road, a few miles to the south.
More than 75 people were arrested from Sept. 13 to 20, 1963, for protesting the demolition of the 15th Ward, with many participating in sit-ins at urban renewal sites on State Street, Harrison Street and Townsend Street organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the NAACP to stop the demolition. They also protested the relocation of ward residents into other “Negro” areas and low-rent districts.
The highway displaced photographer Wilkins’ home, and she didn’t like what city officials and real estate agents were telling her to do. “All the Realtors and city workers were steering people to the South Side,” Wilkins recalls, “and we didn’t want to go to the South Side. Many of my friends did end up moving there, but me and my husband {David Wilkins} as well as my mother-in-law and father-in-law looked for something on the East Side, and we found one, and they did also.”
The 15th Ward was once the “center of the city,” according to Wilkins, now 81. It is now colored with gray latitudes and attitudes, hosting the monochromatic structures of I-81, Upstate Medical University, Hutchings Psychiatric Center, Presidential Plaza and the Public Safety Building in the general southeast side of downtown. The Everson Museum of Art, designed by noted architect I.M. Pei, while gray, is the only building resembling the flair that used to sparkle through the 15th Ward.
“There was the Dunbar Center and St. Sofia’s Greek Church,” remembers Wilkins of her former neighborhood, “and, well, there were a lot of churches on McBride Street that had been synagogues and were purchased by black churches and were really pieces of art. Down Townsend Street, there was the Alcazar Theater and across the street from where I lived on Adams was the Railway Express, sort of our UPS back then. There was also the Star Taxi Company, which was one of the largest in the city back then, and things like that, no longer exist {because of I-81}.
“And then, of course, there were neighborhood stores. There was Mancini’s, Rosenberg’s Drug Store and the Metropolitan Dry Cleaners. The Modern Boot Shop located on Adams Street eventually relocated to Harrison and Townsend. We lived on Adams between State and Townsend and we were right in the middle of everything, we walked everywhere. There were seven or eight theaters downtown: The Strand, The Civic, The Empire, The Paramount, Loew’s State, The Eckel and RKO Keith’s. Where Townsend intersects with Adams, three corners had taverns and on the fourth corner there was a pharmacy called Kopp’s and their slogan was ‘There’s a Kopp on your corner.’ It was a lively neighborhood.”
While African Americans mainly populated the 15th Ward, Wilkins points out more diversity within the neighborhood than met the eye, and recalls living in a four-family house where two of her fellow tenants were white, while several Native American families lived behind her house. And despite it being the pre-civil rights era, she says that everyone treated each other as equals.
“When neighbors got sick, my grandmother made food and took it to them no matter what color they were,” continues Wilkins. “You didn’t have to be boozing buddies, but everyone just got along and respected each other. But there were several bars at that time that were wonderful places to go, like the Embassy Bar and Grille, and they used to have entertainment with bands, vocalists and dancing. It was wonderful and a lot of the dignitaries would stop in to them all. Right now, {original County Executive} John Mulroy is coming to mind, but there were several other prominent officials who came to the bars in the 15th Ward as well.”
And that’s what Wilkins’ work captures: everyday people going about their day, frozen memories of a place vanished without a trace. “It really is a walk down memory lane for a lot of people,” she says of her photos. “My pictures are mainly of people in front of buildings and in doorways, but I love architecture and never thought it would go away, and it has, all of it.”
Another thing Wilkins hopes her exhibit clarifies is the misconception that all African Americans of that time were impoverished and lacking any mores, a myth that has been perpetuated as the years have gone on. “There’s a part of our segment of history that people don’t realize or hear about,” she notes. “In history books, we’re pictured with raggedy clothes or as being slaves and it wasn’t necessarily that way at all. My husband’s family was a little more upper class than we were and my mother-in-law had all this beautiful silver and was marvelous at entertaining; ladies would dress up in mink and fancy hats and come to tea.
“During the opening reception for this exhibition, one woman who I think was Jewish came up to me and was talking about a couple of pictures of my family on the couch watching TV, and she said the pictures reminded her of her family and she had no idea people lived just like she did, and that seems to be the consensus of many people. They had no idea we lived like them.”
Although Wilkins and some of her friends from the 15th Ward still meet on occasion, she admits she gets wistful thinking of the good old days, especially as she notes that she’s lost many of her friends from those days recently. Further, she admits she experiences good days and bad, but is quick to reassure a visitor that she’s “OK, because I’m on my feet.”
If the recent talk of bringing I-81 back to street level, so to speak, is green-lighted, it would signal that the 15th Ward could have partially been preserved if it had originally been designed as such. When asked if she would be happy to see her former stomping grounds return to a more community-oriented area, Wilkins isn’t so enthusiastic.
“I know a lot of people are advocating the demolishing of I-81,” she says, “but I feel since it’s there, let it stay. They’ve already done the damage.”
Tender Mercies
“They got rid of the 15th Ward to construct {Interstate} 81,” says Rose Viviano, director at ArtRage, “the same {Interstate} 81 they’re talking about tearing down. Everyone thinks what they’re doing is right at the time and sometimes history proves people wrong—what a shame if it does come to be.”
Viviano says part of the decision to bring Wilkins’ work in was the photographer’s long history with the community. Gallery brass were also interested in the fact that she chronicled 70 years of a community many people never saw. But after saying that not every ArtRage event has to be a form of protest, Viviano notes the major decision in staging A Tender Record was to show what a healthy community looks like.
“The photos are beautifully crafted and they all draw you in to a sense of time and place,” continues Viviano. “The title, A Tender Record, tells you a lot about what the photos are like. They’re snapshots that draw you in and give you a tender memory of a time and place that’s gone. On the artistic side, the photos have been restored to full beauty by the curator of the exhibition, Nancy Keefe Rhodes, who took on the project to restore them in late 2005.”
Says Rhodes, who also works as an arts journalist for City Eagle: “I spent a lot of time interviewing her and looking through her pictures. I received a grant from the Light Work Gallery in 2008 to restore a selection of photos for a show there which only allowed for work on 20 images, about half of the exhibition. What ArtRage has done was get funding so the rest of the images can be shown and this is the first and only time the whole group has been shown together.”
While restoring the 35 photos, Rhodes encountered the task of figuring out the best way to restore what she calls vernacular photographs: pictures taken by amateur and unknown photographers mostly of family, friends and travel. She notes that when restoring such photos, many people will just crop out everything around the main subject. Instead, what she has done here is preserve the entire composition, leaving the full glory of the 15th Ward and Wilkins’ other subjects as they were taken.
“She happens to have a terrific eye,” observes Rhodes. “But {Wilkins} will tell you she’s not an artist or professional photographer; she was just taking pictures of people she knew and of her community. She didn’t go to photography school until her son David was going to Syracuse University, which is when she went to the Community Darkroom to take courses. Most of her knowledge of photography she gained from doing it and watching people around her. It’s the occupation that she’s always done, as she’s photographed for the Paul Robeson Arts Community, the Community Choir as well as all kinds of singular events.”
A Tender Record is worthy not only for bringing back memories, but it also takes you into the eye of an African American woman making the most of her experience just before the height of the civil rights struggle. “These are wonderful prints,” sums up Rhodes, “and the people of Syracuse who know the history will really enjoy seeing them, but you don’t have to be from Syracuse to appreciate these photos.”
