Maxine Payne-Caufield

So what I wanted to say is that my work is about where I'm from, because that's what I know. Even the feed truck that I've brought into the city is very similar to the work that I've done all along. What I'd like to do is set the stage for my experience and why I make the work that I do, by reading this narrative. Then I can talk specifically about these installations, or we can just move on to how I got the idea to do the feed truck tour. These slides aren't necessarily specific to this narrative, but in the installations I always have a video or audio component to help give the installation a voice and they would contain a similar narrative.

"But, he killed that first man. I don't know. I don't even know the details on it. On it, a period. I just know that he went to the penitentiary. They sentenced him in 1909. He killed him, in 1909 was when he killed him. And I don't even know his name; I've heard it, but that's water under the bridge, I can't remember. But anyhow they gave Dad a year and a day. Well at that time, a year and a day, they'd go and serve six months, and if they didn't give them any problems in the penitentiary, they'd free him, you know. And so anyhow I was three months old when my daddy got out of the penitentiary. And he had went, and he'd got in touch with one of his brothers who was sixteen year old, to come out and live with Mother and the girls up here in the hills. But Gus Jones hisself, he told, he sold, my daddy the old Taylor place up here in the hills. And that's where Dad moved. And Gus told them, if Daddy’d come up there and live, Gus said they'll never find you. But said don't come back on the streets of Newport. If you do, they'll pick you up. And that's when my dad growed his mustache. And I never, he'd never... but anyway he couldn't stay away from his brothers. They was always a close-knit family, the Johnsons. So after, in, about '19 and '20, well I guess it was in the winter of 1911, maybe. But anyhow he decided he had to just go down and see his brother. And he didn't get there, didn't hit the streets until they picked him up. And he went to the penitentiary. He was there, and I was born in it, it was bound to have been '11, because I was born on the 22nd day of May, so that's just the fifth month there in 1912 you see. But anyhow, that's when he growed his mustache. Because he didn't think nobody, anybody'd recognize him, y'see? And he wore that mustache until about 1919, before he'd even shave that off. And I didn't know him, and he played a trick on me, and I couldn't. They's a man a-sittin' there in my daddy's chair that just oughtn't be there. He had a rockin' chair and my mother had a rockin' chair. And he'd shaved that mustache off. And they called me in there and I wasn't, well it was 1912, and what is that then, that's about six or eight years ain't it, from 1912 to 1919. How many years is that anyhow? But anyhow they's a man sittin' there in that rockin' chair, and some man is sittin' in that rockin' chair and I know the old hat looked like my grandpa's, and the old overcoat looked like it, but I didn't know the man. But he'd keep coming up there, trying to get me to hug him, and kiss him, and man, no! But I knowed he didn't have no business a-sittin' in my daddy's chair, now. And I'd dance around there, and I wanted to tell that man to get up out of my daddy's chair, cuz they wasn't, us kids wasn't even allowed to sit in our dad's chair. We could, if he wasn't at the house, but when he got in, he, that was his chair, that was Dad's chair, and Momma's chair was the same. His chair belonged to his mother, and her rockin' chair, that there chair, belonged to her mother. And directly, he got so tickled, him and Mother, that when they went to laughin', I knowed it was my daddy. But up until then I didn't no more know that, than it just tickled the daylights. I was just a dancin' around there, I wanted to tell that guy to get up out of my daddy's chair. They had bushels of fun after that. They'd just laugh their heads off about me, you know. Anyhow, but, he never did wear a mustache no more after 1909."

"Well, now him and Bill Corley, and he was a pretty young boy at the time, they was making whiskey up on Black River. And they had them a big furnace out there, built, and that's where they made, they boiled the whiskey, back out there in the woods. But they's close enough to the river, they'd get the water out of the river. Course that was, you know, they wasn't no people settled back in them bottoms like that, it was closer to the town. And these revenue men was after him. And they had a tree with a ladder built in it, I guess similar to what they got now for deer stands. And they had, well they was more men than just them two, but I don't know how many more men they was, and I don't know who the others was. But Bill Corley is a well known man for making whiskey. And Albert, I mean, Vester, was one that was well known for bootlegging, too. But he made whiskey, too, all the time. It was always whiskey. And he had it in a jug, out on a cable and it swung in the river, all the time, them jugs of whiskey did. I bet you that it's hard telling how many jugs of whiskey was in that river around his houseboat. But he had that cable wire, that wire run from out there, out around the bottom part of a tree, with the leaves around it. The leaves was over that wire there, where people wouldn't ever know. But it was, they's a wire there. And they'd step all over it and never even realize they's a walkin' across that wire. But there's jugs of whiskey out in that river, tied to that. Anyhow, these five revenue men went to get him, went to huntin' him. And they's one of them up in that tree. Well they's more than one tree they could get in, all right, but they's out in the woods, and them revenue men, they picked them five men off just like shootin' crows. And carried them and put them in that furnace and burned 'em. That was a long, long, time ago. And Vester would talk about it. And that's the only man that I ever seen that I really thought my daddy would, or could, be afraid of. That he'd sit and watch Vester and Vester'd watch him cuz they'd watch each other just like a hawk a-watchin' chickens. Cuz Sylvester Stillwell would shoot you that quick. And he did. And your momma knows this, and your dad, too, if he lived. Well I don't mean your momma now, I mean, I call her your momma, but I know she's your grandmother. I thought for a long time she was your mother, but I do know she raised some of her grandkids, you know. But anyhow, one thing she'll remember about them, they was three or four men out picking cotton, and Sylvester Stillwell was working for Bill Hines. Bill Hines was a well known man and he's another whiskey-maker. But he owned what they called the great big hines out there. It was Hines Farm, it's between here and Newport, just right out there in the bottoms. And he had pecan trees, and he and Albert, well a lot of people was a-stealin' his pecans. And he could, not Albert, Albert's another one of Ethel's husbands, he's Albert Conklin, Sylvester was a-ridin' a horse out there and Bill, Bill Hines, let him have a horse to ride. Course he was prepared, he had his guns and everything. And he had Vester a-ridin' over that farm, catchin' people that done that. And they's two or three men out there in the cotton patch. They'd done somethin' all right, I've forgotten now what it was, but I don't know whether they stole pecans or stole some whiskey or somebody's whiskey or what it was. But anyway, this is what your momma, I mean

your granny and them, will remember. Sylvester Stillwell rode that horse right out there in the middle of that cotton patch where they were, and shot every one of them. And killed 'em, right there on the cotton, with the cotton sacks hooked up to 'em and all."

"No, really, I don't think at the time that it had anything to do in the world with anything, only just the way people was a-doin'. None of us has never liked for somebody to steal from us. And you know, they wasn't no jobs, they wasn't no money, nor nothing, no hardly. I don't know where people got the money to buy whiskey at. But they did. Or traded something or something, I don't know. Really, I can't understand how they got it. Because times was always, was hard from all my life. But anyway, they always hired somebody that they knowed, that would do what they told 'em. That would do exactly what they wanted 'em to do. And you know, if they did get, if they did kill 'em, if they couldn't get 'em to not do something, well they shot 'em. And I'll tell you what my daddy done, I've heard him talk about it and, as far as it's not right, in a way, it's not right, but in other way, he's protectin' his family. But somebody was stealin' hogs. And you know, your woods was full of your hogs, you didn't have 'em penned up like we do now, everyone was free range. And Dad missed a hog. And he went a-huntin' for it. And he found where there'd been a hog, well they skinned him out. Well, it's against the law to skin a hog. And it was 'til just a few years ago. And I don't know what it's not now. Now they do it now at these butcher shops, I mean, these butcher places where you go to get your hogs butchered out. They just peel that skin off instead of scrape the hair off. But it sure was a penitentiary to do that years ago. It's always been against the law to shoot a horse, too, and eat it. Just shoot it, or eat it, or what. Now again, you can't even shoot your own dog without it being against the law. They can't get you for killin' your own dog. But whenever they hired these people to do that, they knowed they wouldn't spend but a year and a day, and nine chances out of ten they wouldn't even have to go to the penitentiary. But my daddy, he'd found where they had been skinned out. Well he got to followin' and a-watchin' his hogs, you know, cuz they generally pretty much run in the same places. Only when in the fall, when acorns start to fallin', and then they'll eat one place out and then they'll go on to where there's more acorns, and he caught a man. He'd shot his hog. And he was waitin', my daddy waited 'til he got his shot, well, he, Dad had his gun, too. He had his old shotgun out there, and of course I guess he had his pistol, too. But anyhow, he seen that man stick that, you know, he had to cut that hog's throat. You know, that's to bleed him, you've got to bleed him out. So anyhow, he watched until he'd done that. He started in on that, to work on that hog, to skin it out, my daddy just shot that man, went over there and cut the ham off that hog and stuck it in that man's mouth and left it there, hog and all, and went and got the sheriff. And they didn't do a thing to my daddy. And I was a little kid at the time, I probably wasn't over three or four. But I've heard my mother and him talk about that. But now you didn't, you never, you just didn't steal from people, and they didn't fool around with you, either. Because that was our living. That's the only way you got to a living. And girl, I'm afraid it's going to get back like that, now, the way things is going, to be honest about it. I believe it. But I don't think it's not likin' people. People as always, as far as not really likin' colored people, I don't think that's it. But even the good book tells us to not mix nationalities. Now it's not just nationalities, let's see, what is that? It's supposed to be like, white peoples all supposed to stay white people, and colored and so on and so forth like that. But somewhere there's been some mixin' up. Or we wouldn't have two or three different colors and names of blood in our body. Now that's just has to be. Course we know a lot of Indian men supposed to run off with a lot of white women and this and that and somethin' else. And there's been a lot of white men that's pulled the same capers and all, down through the years. But still, that's not what the good book says. But now there's somethin' like that."

"But there's always been women that's hired somebody, you know, to get rid of their husbands. Oh, they put on big deals about it, you know, if they think they've been mistreated too bad, that's happened, it's called giving them tea, you know. There's certain things, roots and things, that you can dig up. Like now even them castor beans they got on that man. I've knowed all my life that castor beans is one of the poisonous things in the world. But really, I didn't know they was as poisonous as they really are, 'til it come out in the paper, just a few weeks ago. Girl, I've heard that talk all the days of my life, you know, to give 'em some tea. And I know of one family that did do some of that kind of thing, a ways back, when I was a kid. And that happened in about 1920. Well one of it happened in 1920, they's a man, just disappeared complete, he was blind in one eye, and my dad said well, somebody just slipped up onto him on his blind side, and he didn't see him. And he just disappeared. Well years later, after everybody moved out of the country, there's a people in a-prowlin' in and under that house, and there was just a sunk place, just big enough for a man to be laid down in, in and under the ground, under that house. The floor was took up, and one of a women's husband, he just got real bad, and he was sick one whole summer there, and he'd been a great big old fat healthy-lookin' man, and he'd just cough and spit up some of the greenest stuff you'd ever seen in all your life. Well my daddy said it was smoking cigarettes that was rolled with some newspaper. But I don't know, his half-sister, this woman, of her husband disappeared. And the old lady, her husband, something happened to him, and this other woman. But anyhow, all of them was a-drawin' a pension, you know, off of some of them men. At least, that was, one of them was, and that was back as far as 1920. And that's here, between here and Pleasant Plains. But girl, there's always been, there's been a lot of things that a lot of people just don't have no idea about. And I can tell you something else," but I don't know if I should. Have I lost you? Are you doing okay? Should I stop?

"They's a man, that his wife had a little bitty tiny baby right here, well now it's not been, it's been years and years ago, because the girl's dead, the baby's dead now, and she was raised, a big old family and everything. But he, it wasn't too long after the baby, and she was up around there, and he told her to do something, and she didn't do whatever it was he wanted her to do, and he just picked up a stick of wood out of the box and give her a wham, and she fell over dead, left a little bitty tiny baby. There was a man, his wife got out into it, right out there down in Floral. They was young people, had children. But anyhow, they got out there in the yard, and was standing out there in the yard, and he hit her, and her head was supposed to have hit a concrete step, and she was dead. And there's always been things like that, Maxine, and I don't know how people have managed to live with it. But now, I can just name, over people after people, right here in this country, that them things have never been talked about. But now the older people know what to get to make a little tea out of, and I've heard that talk, I have heard that talk all the days of my life, when I was a kid growing up. So I don't know where we’re, in a way, it's just got where there's more people, and there's more knowed today than there used to be. But girl, there's always been things. Now that's just exactly, that's just exactly right. But I don't know, it's not right to do that, it sure ain't. And I don't agree with anybody doing anything like that. But now that's just the way the world is, Maxine."

This is another installation, and this story's a little bit shorter. So I'll just go through it, if that's okay. This one's funnier, and not so depressing.

"Well, I was sittin' in old John's lap, and I'd been canning beans all day, and back then, well it's been eight years ago, I didn't ever wear shorts, and I don't wear them out in the yard, now. But I've got to where I do. But anyhow, I had on a pair of shorts after canning all day. It's on along about eight o'clock I reckon, when I took my last ones off. And I had to go to the bathroom. And I reached to get my toilet paper. And I knowed I had it a-sittin' there on the floor, and it was usually there in a sack, 'tween the stool and the bathtub. And I reached, and I couldn't feel it. And I reached again, and I felt something that felt like a washcloth, or a piece of bath towel. And I thought to myself, well, what in the world is that there? That's not supposed to be there. And I couldn't feel my toilet paper. Well, I reached again, and that time I heard a noise. And so, but anyhow, I felt that rough down there, and I stuck my dad burn finger down there, that time, and he got my little finger. Well, I give it a shake. I thought, well a mouse has got me. And when I shook it, it wouldn't fall off. And I give it a swing. And I knowed, right then, it was a snake. And I jumped, and I turned, and I didn't have a light on, in the bathroom, I've always been afraid somebody could look in the winder and see me at night. But anyway, I jumped up, and I turned that on, and there was my snake. A copperhead. And I thought, well how in the world will I kill him? I couldn't think of a dad burn thing but my walking stick. I got a walking stick, it's got a crooked handle, and I run and got it, and by the time I got back, well he was a-crawlin' in behind my stool. And he went under, went under that hot-water tank there. Well I run to the phone. I called up there at Allender's and Maxine answered and I told her, I said, Maxine, I just got bit by a snake. And she said, what? And I said, I just got bit by a snake. And she said, what kind is it. And I said, a copperhead. And she said, well, we'll be there in a minute. George had already pulled one boot off, and she was gettin' ready for bed, but anyhow, it didn't take 'em but a minute to get down there. Well I run and got in the bathtub and took me a shower. And put on some different clothes. When George got down there, I said, ‘Son, he's in and under that hot water tank. Should we kill him?’ And he said, ‘Momma, we'll never get to town now before you die.’ So I said, ‘Let me get me an old quilt crammed down there in that door, and we'll shut him in that door there,’ and he said, ‘Momma, let's go!’ Well, I went and got a quilt anyway and crammed it in there, cuz I was a-holdin' him in and under that tub. I didn't want him out in my house. And as we went out, Maxine started on out and George was still a-tuckin' that quilt down there, and Maxine got to the porch and she said, ‘Um, Momma, there ain't nothing no better than coal for snake bites, but we don't have any of that, of course.’ And I said, ‘George, grab my old coal-oil lamp up there off the cabinet and take the chimney and burner off of it and bring it out here,’ and her and me went on and got in my car. Well he was so excited he couldn't start my car. He flooded it, and it wouldn't start. And he said, ‘I don't think I got enough gas to get us there,’ but said, ‘We'll get as far as we can.’ He jumped up and got in there, and he was scared to death, Maxine. He tore up the fence from here to Batesville. And I told him, I said, ‘Son, don't drive so fast, you're liable to get us picked up.’ And he said, ‘Well, Momma, that's what I want. If the law picks me up, he'll take you on to town.’ And I said, ‘Okay’ and I kept my finger in that lamp all the way, and I soaked that oil all over my arm as we went. So they took me right on to the emergency room, and Maxine told them what that I'd done, but my hand done swelled up above my wrist. And he said, ‘Oh, them old home remedies ain't no count, and they don't amount to nothin'.’ Said, ‘That's just like pourin' water on it.’ And Maxine said, ‘Well, what did the old folks do a long time ago when they couldn't get to the doctor?’ And he said, ‘Well, most of them died.’ And so anyway, he kept me over there about an hour and a half, and he said, ‘Well her arm sure ain't swellin'.’ But it had finally swelled up, just to about my elbow. And so anyway, they took me to bed. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘somebody's going to check on you.’ Well, they did give me a shot, and he said, ‘Now, they're going to check on you all night long.’ And they did. Well, there's a big old colored man there that waited on me all night. He was in and out. But they hung my arm up in the air, you know. With my hand hanging up. And you know, it never did swell any higher than my elbow. Now whether it was the kerosene or what it was, the next morning Maxine and George come over there, and George was scared to death. But he took the gun, and he went in there, and Maxine said, ‘He had me to take the quilt out from there, and shake it, as I went along, to see that the snake wasn't in it. And I couldn't find it.’ And George went ahead and opened the door and eased around in there, and he looked over there and he couldn't find it. And he finally went over there and jerked the curtain back from the bath tub. And he couldn't see no snake. But he put it back and he pulled it back and shut it, and when he did, he heard a noise in there, and he looked down in the bathtub. He looked in the tub there, and I've got me a board a-layin' across the top that I keep my shampoo and soap and stuff on, and he looked and he seen that. And there was the snake coiled up on that. So anyway, I don't know if the kerosene helped, or whether it was just my imagination or what, but anyhow, my arm didn't swell all that bad, and I didn't die from it."

The reason I wanted to read that little bit of a narrative is because it's really about what my work's about. It's about my experience. What I'm struggling with right now, I think, is I had lived in Arkansas all my life, and was only out for three years when I went to Iowa, which is not real urban, but much more so than where I grew up. There were people from all over the world there. I sort of realized that my experience was different. I have since moved back to Arkansas, and I'm teaching there. I had a real strong desire to be back in Arkansas. I really thought that that's where I needed to be. Both in terms of being there for my family: my grandparents are getting older, and I thought I wanted to be close to them, and what's left of my immediate family. But also because I wanted to be there to work with the students that are there, because I know what it's like growing up there. Trying to be creative is not encouraged at all. So what I found going back, and what's been so difficult, is—and I knew this existed before I left, of course I wasn't completely naive—all the bad things that exist, that are so rooted in our culture that I have to deal with and work through, while maintaining a respect and love that I have for the people, and the fact that that's what gives me my inspiration to work. That's been really difficult. That's been the catalyst for the Elsinger feed truck tour. One of the first things that I saw when I moved back was the truck being used in a business, every day, a white man owned it and he owned a feed store. He drove it every day to another town to load it up and bring it back into the town that I moved to, to make deliveries, without ever even considering that it may not be appropriate for him to be doing that.(because of the image on the side). I also have struggled with the idea of audience because for a long time, when I was making my work and going to graduate school, I was a fellow in Iowa. I was making more money as a student than my family was living off of, and I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. So I always thought that there had to be some way that I could take my work back into that community, and show it to them, do something with them. It's a lot, to them, that I spend the time with them, and that I take photographs. A lot of times I don't take photographs, I just visit. I don't do anything but help them out with whatever they're doing. That matters a lot to them, but I was still feeling bad, and a lot of guilt about taking it into different communities who hadn't had that experience. All this is to say, it was equally naive of me to think that I could take the work to them, and that it would matter. Because it doesn't. It's still out of their—it's not out of their capacity to understand, but it's so irrelevant to their experience. Their experience is about survival, it's not about someone making work about their experience. So all I can do to relate, I guess, and to make myself feel good—and it's something I would do anyway, because it's my family—is to be there, and to try to take it into my teaching, to the students there. There are a lot of issues that the Elsinger feed truck tour raises, obviously. I think what I would like to do, because it's in its very beginning stages—this is the first formal venue, the first formal showing that I've had. We stopped at truck stop in Pennsylvania and invited people out. I had a very similar experience. It was almost sort of egotistical of me, I felt, to even ask those people to participate. That was the original intent, was to not take it to any art or academic venues at all. It was about taking it to, what I say, are real people. Not that we aren't real people, but to just take it to the people whose experience it was closer to. The response, so far, has been, "This isn't relevant." The only thing that it does do that I think is really interesting, is it allows people a little bit of their story that relates to mine, and often people end up talking about their grandparents, or some kind of rural connection that they have. But for the most part, I've had mixed feelings in taking it to those kind of venues. This is the very first academic stop, and from here, I'm going to be travelling for about two and a half more weeks. This piece is actually about what happens on the road, what kind of responses I get, and how people interpret it. So it's sort of premature for me to talk a lot about it, but I would like to open up questions about it, for those of you who've seen it. Hopefully, we can open up the truck again, for those who haven't. Would that be appropriate, to just talk about it? If anyone has any questions about the truck?

Audience: What were the photographs in the top border? There was that border running along the top.

Caufield: Yeah, that's a really interesting story. When I went to graduate school, I was in this theory class with Margaret Stratton. She showed these images up on the wall of these beautiful rural people, who I immediately started to recognize. She said, "These are people from Heber Springs, Arkansas." I said, "Wait a minute—that's Heber Springs, Arkansas, and I grew up twenty minutes from there." She was going into all this academic stuff, and intellectualizing these farm people, and I started to realize that those were people that I knew. I immediately got really interested, of course, and I called home. Not that my family would of known; my grandparents raised me, and my grandpa's illiterate. He can't read or write. My grandma learned reading, I think, from the Bible. They're not educated, at all. I knew that they wouldn't know, but my sister married into a family, her mother-in-law was the public school librarian, I thought she may have some idea. Plus, her brother was in the pictures. So I called home and they actually knew a little bit about the story. What happened, to make a long story short, is that there was a New Yorker, named Peter Miller, who moved to Arkansas, like a lot of people that have money do, to live in the hills and be a hippie. He set up a commune in this town called Westside which is on the Greers Ferry lake. Well, people, I happen to know in my family, men, ran those guys out because there were all these rumors that they were sharing wives and they grew marijuana. I mean, you just can't do that, right? So they ran them out, and Peter Miller moved to Heber Springs and he became the editor of the paper there. He somehow figured out that there had been a photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas in the 30's and 40's and his name was Michael Meyer. He had changed his name to Mike Disfarmer. He had been there for many years and had been photographing the townspeople in Heber Springs who weren't really in the town, but they would come in from the country on the weekends, have a milkshake, and have their picture taken for 25 cents. Because it was the time of the war, a lot of women were doing it and sending them off to their men in the battlefields. A lot of families were doing it because they knew that they were going to lose their sons. He took a lot of pictures: there were around 4,000 glass plates. Basically, in the South, there are very few things you have to do to be considered an outsider. One thing that he did was he drank beer. It's all dry counties so there are very few places where you can buy alcohol. Even where we live, we have to drive an hour and a half to get a beer. It's very taboo to drink; it's just not a thing you do. So, he was drinking beer. (it was before Prohibition). He also said he didn't believe in the Bible. Well, that's all it takes. He was a freak, period. People would sort of run in, get their picture taken, and run back out. The big attraction in the art world is that—he was very simple, he only had one backdrop—so anyway, Peter Miller, this New Yorker, buys all of Mike Disfarmer's negatives for a dollar, and starts reprinting them. His gallery is right down here in Soho. His prints are $600-$1200 a piece. The book, that's out of print, I found in a bookstore down here in Soho for $600. Nobody in the community has the book, and nobody in the community knows that these prints are selling for so much money; except that I've gone back and told them. Right before I came to New York, one of my best friend's dad was running for a county position, which is really a big deal. You don't have to have an education, at all. I don't think he finished high school but he was going to be county judge. So I was sort of campaigning for him and he pulled out a bunch of original Disfarmers which are very small and simple. You know, you buy them at flea markets on pieces of cardboard. Really plainly printed photographs, that they have because they're of their family. Well, Peter Miller's are 16x20", sepia toned, amazing, beautiful, beautiful images. Just unbelievably exquisite. He's touched them up quite a lot. Since then, there have been three books published: a second one by Peter Miller, which is more like the original photographs—they're small; and then another New Yorker, who was living in New Mexico at the time, named Toba Tucker who went down to Heber Springs and re-photographed the descendants of the people in the Disfarmer photographs and has a book. So that's sort of my thing, just saying, "This is where I'm from." I think my representing the people is legitimate. I don't, however, think Peter Miller's is because I went in his gallery the last time I was here, and I said, "I want to see Peter Miller's work," and I pulled them out and started naming names. The woman had no interest in me, whatsoever, or my experience, but she was very interested in the fact that I knew the names because she didn't know the names. She wanted to be sure to get them down so she could add it to her repertoire of information, to sell to the public. That's just my, I'm sure it's a good thing they're out in the world. It's just my personal feeling that those people are being ripped off. I don't even have the book, but I did do xeroxes of them.

Audience: It's interesting, Maxine, how your explanations of the rural, or flyover, community is much different than Linda's and Sandra's. Why do you think that is? Is it geography, or religion?

Caufield: It's very much geography. I can tell you from my experience in Iowa that Midwesterners, for the most part, are educated, for one thing. They're very smart; this was my experience. Even the way they farm is so much different from Southerners. My Southern experience is a lot different than a lot of people's. I'm not saying that my Southern experience is everyone's; I'm saying this is my personal Southern experience. Very poor, from an uneducated family, and we grew up in the Ozark mountains where you can't farm the land because it's all rocks and clay. Which is why we have so many chickens. The people just weren't educated, and not many are now. I think that's why. I think Midwesterners just have this savviness that is so much different than Southerners. I'm not saying that Southerners aren't smart; they're smart in different ways. They're wise. Wise in ways that I will never be. These women, their experiences and their knowledge of things, I will probably never have, because the world caters to me, you know, in a different way than it did for them.

Audience: You know Iowa has the highest average level of education in the United States? Thirteen. And it has the highest literacy rate in the nation.

Caufield: Yes, the percentage of children that go to college in Iowa is amazing.

Audience: I was curious about what you were saying was legit and what's not—this guy that is selling out of this gallery. Is it specifically because of the making money off of it, or how it looks, or that he's not from there? Can you talk more about where that's coming from and what would be an authentic or inauthentic representation?

Caufield: I think, for me, it's the fact that I don't think that he—there's a lot of things. First of all, he is a lawyer in Little Rock now and he has these huge billboards with 1-800 numbers about personal injury cases. Personally I just think he's probably not a genuinely interested person. I can tell you that because none of the people that I know that have Disfarmer photographs know anything about this man; he didn't spend any time with them. He knows nothing of their experience, except that he had the money to move to the Ozark mountains to set up a commune and a dinner theater and become a lawyer and make money off of something that he is not that he can think of as being nostalgic and find some sort of warped beauty in because he doesn't have to experience it; he can just look at it. That's just what I think. He's probably a really nice man. I don't know; I've never called him up or anything. But, I guess one of the reasons I include those images is they're amazing and beautiful images and, also, because I know some of the people and because I've gone back and said to people, "Did you know about this photographer in the 30s and 40s? Did you get your picture taken?" Of course, it's only the babies, now, that are alive and are now adults. But it's such an interesting thing because immediately they pull them out and begin to tell you the stories about what they remember from that time legitimate experiences. I think it's difficult, but I think you have to give something back to the community that you take from and I don't know that he did. I mean, he was the editor of the paper, that might be something, but I don't think so.

Audience: I noticed that, in particular, this one where you have the hubcaps around the doorway, you have the bottle tree, the milk jug and chicken feet. We were talking about a lot of the iconography and yard art, and the magical powers that it holds. That iconography, is that also based in some kind of spirituality or cosmology?

Caufield: Well, I think not. I think it's something that has to do with the desire to collect things when you're poor. To have things around you to make you feel like you have things, no matter what they are. So there's a lot of hubcaps on the sides of buildings. There's a lot of stuff, everywhere, stuff. There are fewer and fewer bottle trees now. There were a lot of bottle trees when I was growing up, but they had Mountain Dew bottles on them; you know, whatever bottle at the time. I know that comes from an African tradition. But I don't think that where I grew up those people know that. I think it's something that was somehow passed along and now it's just aesthetic. I don't think it has much to do with spirituality.

Audience: I guess when we talk about what is the American, you know, what are we made up of: the European, the Native American and the African. So there is this blending of all these cultures that makes us who we are today. And I think that a lot of the antecedents of the iconography of today has been lost in tradition and over time. That's possibly even, because the fact that you have them placed around the doorway, it might be an aesthetic issue but, again, it might have been that it came from something that has been translated. But it lost what it came from originally and that's still how people are expressing that. The other question I had to pose to you, that I posed to the other woman, in terms of the poor white woman not having a voice, do you find yourself being an advocate or trying to give voice to a community that didn't have a true sense of voice, or an advocacy group out there talking about their issues?

Caufield: I'd love for that to happen, if the potential is there. I sort of think that that's what could be happening. It would make sense that I would do it for poor white women. I grew up that way. I hate to say, "Yeah, I'm an advocate," because I don't even touch where they go, as far as involving the community and such. I go out and I spend time with them. I don't really involve them in my process except that, for example, when I go, "These stories are from Mrs. House," to see Mrs. House, in order for me to get the time to shoot the video of her, I have to bring her five gallons of acorns from my grandma. Just that kind of thing. I'll help her a little bit in her garden, or just spending time with them is about the extent of the collaboration that I do. I have big grand ideas about doing collaboration, and I think what I'm doing, as far as collaboration right now, is through the university. Just being there, as a young woman who came from there, and left, and had an experience, in going back where the majority of my students who are in their early 20s, have children, and they're in horrible relationships and are afraid to dream of a life for themselves because of this lot they have been given. I think that is where my collaboration lies now.

Synopsis by Jodene Eikenberry

Maxine Payne-Caufield makes photographic installations which explore class and social issues stemming from her rural Arkansas roots. Currently, she's transformed a dilapidated 1930's feed truck into an exhibition-on-wheels which she's driving to New York City, Washington D.C. and other locations. Her goal is to provide the outside world with a glimpse of southern culture through the authenticity of her own voice; to challenge stereotypes by presenting her family's and friends' stories with simplicity, power and lyricism.

The centerpiece of Payne-Caufield's installation are full length photographic murals of southern women. Brown splotches of chemistry distress the photographic surface providing an aged appearance. Smaller images depicting family members, houses and landscapes are repetitively hand stitched around the photograph's edges. The murals are hung from the truck's walls that are also papered with old canceled checks, church collection envelopes, yellowed newspapers, and a hand drawn family tree. Southern folk and country music plays. Strings of dried chicken's feet hang from one corner. Rice hull is strewn across the floor. "King Biscuit and Sonny Boy" logos are painted on the truck's exterior, though in New York City Payne-Caufield covered the "Sonny Boy" logo with a tarp to avoid causing offense due to the racist representation of an African-American eating biscuits.

During her presentation Payne-Caufield showed slides of her other photographic installations. While slowly clicking through these images she read excerpts of stories told to her by women relatives and friends: stories of bootlegging and dead Revenue men; a man killing another over a stolen hog; a woman poisoning her husband with roots. "I'm not saying that it was right or that I agreed with it, but that's just the way it was, girl," she recited with a lilting accent.

Payne-Caufield brought up the issue of representation by an outsider, primarily Michael Disfarmer's 1940's photographs of the residents of Heber Springs. These photographs were later purchased by photographer and dealer Peter Miller, and are currently sold in his SoHo gallery for $600 each. She noted that none of the photographed people, or their kin, know their images are being sold for a considerable profit. What disturbs her is the lack of exchange involved. "You need to give something back to the community," she stated. Miller's business provides further incentive for her own photographic practice. "I'm not perpetuating stereotypes," she added; "I'm showing...the reality I was raised in. This is my real life."

Payne-Caufield closed by discussing her ambivalence in regards to the clearly racist "Sonny Boy" image on the truck. In her desire to authentically represent her people, she felt that leaving the image visible was vital; there are no African Americans living in her part of Arkansas .".and never will be...Why would they want to move into an area where there is absolutely no common ground for diversity?" she rhetorically asked. Yet she is fully aware of the racist implications contained in the "Sonny Boy" stereotype. She is uncomfortable with the potential perception by Northerners of "a white Arkansas woman driving a truck that promotes racist stereotypes"—while she has no ability to counter this appearance through dialogue. During exhibitions she will be present to discuss the "Sonny Boy" image with anyone who takes offense. She's decided to keep the image under wraps while on Northern roads. Payne-Caufield's honesty in sharing her struggle with this difficult issue of representation provided fertile ground for a continued discussion of authentic voices and cultural difference.

Analysis by David Reed

Maxine Payne Caufield treated us to a sampler of sights and sounds of rural Arkansas. This came in the form of a mobile exhibition in a truck and a (somewhat difficult to understand) reading in her local dialect. Payne Caufield spoke of her thoughts when she was younger, that "all happiness involved just getting out of Arkansas," and of her realization while studying in Iowa, that her experiences were a rich source to draw upon for her art. Not that she suddenly saw her home state as some sort of utopia; she just felt that people should value their own experiences and think of art more as an expression of daily life. She touched on a potential difficulty of this way of working. When she brought her artwork home, she discovered that her family and neighbors found it irrelevant: "Their life is about survival," she explained.

Audiences were raised as to what constitutes legitimate representation. Peter Miller bought some 4000 glass plate negatives by Mike Disfarmer who owned and operated a photo studio in Hebor Springs, Arkansas. He published an expensive limited edition art book of selected photos. As well, he sells prints for $600-$1200 each at the Staley Wise Gallery. Payne Caufield felt that the problem with this work was not so much a matter of prices and profits, but that Miller did not know enough, care enough about the people, or spend enough time in the area depicted in the photos.

A Fellow asked whether she thought she was feeding or perpetuating stereotypes through her artwork. She replied, "this is my real experience. I don't know about any other southern experience I can talk about and be honest." It was then suggested that perhaps to expand the public's notion of who or what is being referred to by the stereotype—to help make the people and their world real, by its very nature works against such prejudices: that the danger in stereotypes is not their specific instances, but that the people targeted are not adequately known or understood by stereotype holders.

I signed up for this talk because I am interested in what seems to be an under-representation of rural themes and sensibilities in art galleries and museums. While Payne Caufield's talk did not directly address this question, it raised another issue that I think is relevant to many artists: namely, how to be an effective cultural emissary aiming to bring a remote or misunderstood place or idea alive in a given audience.

As ever more people across the globe find themselves living far from home, and/or interacting with people of different cultural backgrounds, the need for good emissaries as well as good listeners becomes more urgent. Payne Caufield's approach (I'm suddenly reminded of Soviet "agitprop" trains, though it's worth noting that she doesn't have any governmental agenda behind her) seems as good an attempt as any.