'This Woman's Work' explores the legacies of prominent Black women in Central New York. The exhibit will run through Feb. 28. Credit: Yolanda Stewart | Central Current

When Cheeki Williams reflects on her own story, she remembers one phrase: “Planted, not buried.” 

Those three self-affirming words gave her past a renewed purpose and outlook for her future.

Williams, a Syracuse-based multidisciplinary artist, first used the phrase as a poem. Shortly after she turned it into a song and eventually transformed it into her brand and art business: Planted not buried. 

It’s the title of her first-ever public art installation featured in “This Woman’s Work” art exhibit at the Community Folk Art Center. The exhibition’s curator is Rochele Royster, a Syracuse University Creative Arts Therapy Department professor and community psychologist.

Williams’ work has joined the display of notable Black women whose experiences leave lessons for those who follow them. The figures in the exhibit include musician Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, herbalist Elsye Brooks, and abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Sarah Loguen Fraser. All are recognized as Central New York icons for the ways they have historically cared for the world they inhabited. 

“There’s this abolitionist energy that has always been here. I was just really taken aback by some of the stories … it just made me want to dig a little bit further around the community work that has held up Syracuse,” Royster said. “A lot of that that I was noticing were these really strong black women figures, which I felt people needed to know about.”

The exhibit is on display in the Herbert T. Williams Gallery at CFAC. It features mixed media artworks from 13 local artists and will run until Feb. 28. For the entire month of February until early March, the gallery is offering opportunities for community members to engage with the exhibition through a series of free community-based workshops and activities. Each week guests can attend a doll-making workshop, participate in Optical Illusion and Painting, or design Zines and Afrofuturism and Shibori and Indigo Dye.

There will also be a community quilt where guests can design a 10-inch by 10-inch patch to attach to the quilt. Those interested in participating can stop by CFAC and design one. All supplies will be provided. 

In response to recent diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks, Royster is developing a curriculum based on the exhibit for teachers in the Syracuse City School District. She is working with Courtney Mauldin, a Syracuse University professor and an artist featured in the exhibit. 

Having a space like CFAC, where the Black women’s stories are memorialized was important to Royster. The center is a holding space for community and connection-building, she said. 

Royster felt the lessons passed down from the Black women depicted in the exhibit have not been recognized in the city’s art scene, conversations, and curriculum. 

“The main reason why I wanted to look at these stories closely using art, but also storytelling, [is] because I wanted to create a framework of care that has historically been here, and use that framework to inspire the community work that I do,” Royster said. 

Royster relocated to Syracuse three years ago from Chicago. She has spent more than six years curating art exhibits in the two cities. 

After learning about figures like Sarah Loguen Fraser and Anna Short Harrington, Royster was moved by the often untold stories of Black women in the area. This exhibit was her way of reflecting on their contribution to the region. 

Rochele Royster, a Syracuse University Creative Arts Therapy Department professor and community psychologist, helped put “This Woman’s Work” together. Royster wanted the exhibit to be interactive and educational. Credit: Yolanda Stewart | Central Current

To actualize her vision, Royster collaborated with Syracuse-based multidisciplinary artists, including Williams and Giselle Richmond. Royster, who is an artist, also has work featured in the exhibit. 

She began working on the exhibit more than a year ago and began putting a call out for local artists. 

Once she established a core group of artists, Royster started the process by having each artist research the stories of the iconic figures and discussing which stories resonated with them. 

Each artist selected figures and created artwork around those figures’ stories, Royster said. 

Many of the women’s images are portrayed through stilled portraits of paintings, collages, and other media art forms. 

Giselle Richmond, who is also a first-time exhibitor at CFAC, chose Elsye Brooks, an herbalist and domestic worker who lived in Ithaca. 

Richmond painted a portrait of Brooks where she is seated in a colorful garden. In her depiction of Brooks, she focused on humanizing her. Other portrayals of Brooks often rely on the narratives of mysticism and resilience that formerly enslaved people like Brooks are often relegated to, Richmond said

As part of the exhibit, Richmond is going to lead a workshop on character design for kids next month. 

Williams’ installation, ‘Planted, not buried,’ hangs on the wall in the gallery. The installation includes semi-nude self-portraits of Williams in black and white. She modeled for the photos during a shoot in 2017. 

Now Williams’ images share space with women who made history and others who are presently doing impactful work in Central New York. 

“It was the first and only shoot that represented ‘planted not buried,’” Williams said. “… I knew that one day it was going to matter.”

Williams relocated to Syracuse from New York City almost seven years ago to escape an abusive relationship and to find a safer environment to raise her daughter.

She took the photos eight years ago but did not post them online. Williams knew the photos would serve a bigger purpose, she said. 

She has used art as an economically sustainable path to liberation for herself and her daughter. It also remedied her pain. She makes waist beads, crochet designs, and writes poetry.

Currently, she uses her life lessons and talents in her work as an art teacher in the Syracuse City School District and at Redhouse. She also owns and manages an online boutique. 

Through her work as an arts activist, Williams endeavors to help women who are survivors of abuse find their way back to themselves through restorative art practices. 

Royster’s exhibit sets the backdrop for discussions and depictions of women whose work charts a path toward fighting inequalities today.  

“I didn’t want it to be just this static kind of ‘put up an exhibit’ and then leave it alone. I wanted it to be an interaction and a sharing between the center and the people,” Royster said. “I wanted to be able to offer art skill shares and art experiences for people to come in, bring their families, bring their kids, [and] create art in a beautiful space. Then have something to take with them and to move forward.”

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Yolanda Stewart was raised in the Bronx, New York City. Before choosing a career path in journalism she found a voice in writing plays, short stories, and a myriad of other creative outlets. She is a 2022...