When 5:30 a.m. comes around, Carrie Mae Weems is wide-awake and thinking about how the world came to be, how she came to be and how she ended up becoming an artist.

“I think about the limits of time and I feel as though as I am a speck of dust floating in the universe,” she said.

Weems spoke as part of the University Lecture Series at Hendricks Chapel on Tuesday. Her lecture, titled “Swinging Into Sixty: A Woman Ponders the Future,” focused on how she found herself in the world of art beginning at age 15, how she’s evolved as an artist and the projects she is currently working on.

“I was a certain woman coming from a certain background,” Weems said. “A couple of years ago I turned 60, and besides getting older, it was getting interesting,” she said.

Weems has used different mediums for her work over the years. In the span of her career, Weems has had her photographs, films and videos in over 50 exhibitions around the world.

Weems’ work also includes paintings, large print banners and live music symposiums. Her current work can be seen at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The exhibition, “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” opened in January.

“The mission of art is not only to deliver beauty but to disrupt it,” Weems said. “I want to have something where thousands of people can engage.”

Weems’ interest in art began with photography. It was the first encounter with art that transformed and influenced her, she said, adding that she didn’t know photography would take her where it has.

One of Weems’ most famous photography projects is the “Kitchen Table Series,” a series of photos showing people at a kitchen table.

“I looked for what signified me, the way I looked at the world, constructed the world,” she said. At the time, she said she was no longer searching for her voice but rather when and where to enter a frame.

Weems said she believes it is essential to study other artists. In her work, she constantly makes references to other artists, she said.

“It is important to keep working, growing, inventing, considering the scope of your work,” Weems said. Artists are people “that are trying to figure out a way forward, while being succumbed to the past,” she said.

Weems is currently working on a garden project for the Museum of Modern Art, where she focuses on creating movement that existed in another time, and a pop up radio show, where she talks to other artists and discusses their current works.

Jillian Cabrera, a freshman computer art major, said he attended the event because he thinks it is important to be exposed to living artists. Cabrera said he found it interesting to hear how Weems sees art from different perspectives.

Nancy Taylor, a senior art photography major, said she studied Weems’ work in one of her classes.

“It is different to hear artists talk about their work and how their intention plays a big part of it,” Taylor said. “Plus, it’s nice to see a woman photographer in a man’s world.”

Published on October 29, 2014 at 12:01 am

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