Deep in the heArt of Mexico

By Jessica Stark

High in the rugged central region of Mexico, about 185 miles northwest of Mexico City, lies the unlikely destination of a group of Rice art students: the former ghost town of Mineral de Pozos.

Mexico

Once one of the most important mining towns in the region, Pozos had, at the end of the 19th century, 300 working mines and a population of 70,000. But by 1910, silver prices had fallen, and the mines began closing down. In the 1950s, only about 200 people called the half-forgotten town home.

In 2007, the children of Pozos, ages 7 to 16, were given cameras and other materials to help them discover, explore and capture their town through photography.

But life eventually returned to the old ghost town. Today, about 3,500 residents are reclaiming the ruins and treading the dusty cobbled streets. There are shops and hotels and, amazingly, about 10 art galleries — testimony to the fact that many of the approximately 50 Americans who live at least part time in Pozos are artists.

Among them are Geoff Winningham ’65, Rice professor of visual arts, and his wife, Janice Freeman, and the two have brought a penchant for art instruction — as well as a little bit of Rice — to the people of Pozos.

In 2007, the Jung Center of Houston commissioned Winningham to organize an exhibition for FotoFest 2008, an international showcase of photography and photo-related art. As he mulled over ideas for the exhibition, he recalled a printmaking class Freeman had taught in her Pozos studio to some children from a nearby orphanage.

“The prints they made were quite beautiful,” Winningham said. “So I began to wonder if I could do something similar for the kids in Pozos — teach them basic photography, help them photograph their town, process and print their work, and still assemble a show in time for FotoFest.”

Winningham had only six months to get funding, buy cameras and materials, find and teach the Pozos children who wanted to participate, help them produce the pictures, and then frame the show and hang it. Others might have panicked or scrapped the idea altogether, but Winningham had ready and willing resources in the form of Rice students. With the Jung Center’s full support, the Pozos Children’s Project was off the ground, and Winningham, Freeman and a group of Rice students were bound for the town. There, they gave cameras and other materials to local children ages 7 to 16, who explored and captured their town through photography.

The result was “Mi Pueblo,” an exhibition of photographs and monotypes that has toured Texas and Mexico and that eventually will stop at art galleries at the University of Notre Dame, Duke University and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, among others.

The project also grew into a larger endeavor: the Pozos Art Project Inc., a Texas nonprofit corporation founded last year. And the work continued this past summer when Winningham and Freeman led another group of Rice students on a month-long artistic and educational outreach trip to the former ghost town. The students taught classes and workshops on photography, painting and drawing to the community’s children and young adults and organized public art exhibitions. This year, a small group of Houston high school students also went along to further create opportunities for cultural exchange.

“We’ve had so much success with the project, we feel that we must keep it going and growing,” Winningham said. “It’s not just about making extraordinary art. We hope that through our projects, we can foster understanding, good relations and shared cultural experiences between young people of the U.S. and Mexico.”