June 9, 2007
The Coleman Center for the Arts is pleased to announce a new project of the Public Artworks Program by current resident artist Suzanne Hagood. Video and Sound Event: Community Collaboration, is the result of Hagood’s six-month residency at the Coleman Center for the Arts. The outdoor installation and gallery exhibition will open to the public on June 9th from 7-9 PM, and the exhibition will be on display through July 29th.
The project was designed to point to the ongoing transitions of York, Alabama and the surrounding community, and it’s loss of downtown culture. Calling on local residents for collaboration and shared experience, the project incorporates sound and video that will culminate in an outdoor installation and gallery exhibition.
Hagood’s work investigates the history of York as a railroad town, as well as contemporary car culture. The video footage of moving trains will be projected onto three structures that lay along the old railroad track. These images act as shadow or reflection pointing to memory—reminders of past trains, and stories. Sound will be played from five “tricked out” car speakers playing in order to mimic the sound of the moving train. The incorporation of Hip-Hop culture car speakers for shared sound experience, instead of personal musical choice, acts as a cultural, generational, and racial dialogue within the community.
Hagood, herself from a small rural community in the South, hoped to create a voice for rural communities within the larger art world. The gallery exhibition features ten sound and video works produced by Hagood, area students, and Auburn University students Paul Bryant and Lisa Berry. The videos feature interviews with community members expressing their memories of York and ideas for positive movement into the future.
This project is made by possible by funding from the Alabama Power Foundation, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the generous contributions of our individual supporters. For more information please contact the Coleman Center for the Arts, 205.292.2005, info@colemanarts.org.
About the Artist
Suzanne Hagood, who received her MFA from Texas Tech University in 2003, and began teaching at Auburn as an Visiting Professor of Art in the fall of 2006. Most recently, she spent a year at the University of Tennessee as Visiting Artist and Assistant Professor of Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including Knoxville, Dallas, Houston, Santa Fe, and New York City. Hagood has received a number of invitations for her performance and collaborative works including the 2004 Santa Fe Music Festival, at the Santa Fe Art Institute and the International Sculpture Conference, Revelation Texas Show, at the University of Houston, 2000. Awards include a George Latta Award for Excellence and the Dr. E.N. & Fan Woodson Jones Scholarship.