Yorke's itinerary for the Watson Fellowship includes spending three months in each of four cities: Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa, Canberra and Sydney in Australia. "Those are the places where the museums are, where the artists focused on political and racial reconciliation are and where my connections and the universities are," he said. Yorke plans to spend his time abroad speaking to artists, museum curators, museum visitors and "everyday people." In his project proposal, Yorke laid out his goals: "In South Africa, I would focus on individual interpretations of reconciliation as well as on the ways groups strive to influence a collective memory of Apartheid. In Australia, I would concentrate on the contrast between the government's rhetoric of reconciliation and the everyday realities of Aboriginal life. [...] I want to gain cross-cultural distance so as to scrutinize my own set of assumptions about race and reconciliation."
A gifted artist
Yorke also plans to make his art interactive-he plans to talk to people before he begins to work, and then to return to the same people afterwards to show them his art and to record their reactions. "I want to hear what people say about the visions presented in art-visions presented in both indigenous art and my own," he wrote in the proposal. When he returns from his year abroad, Yorke will join the other Watson Fellows at a conference where they will present their projects.
Yorke had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do after doing a similar project during the summer before his senior year in his hometown of Topeka, Kan. Yorke "intended to unveil the deepest psychological truths" about America's racial dilemma. "It took one month, eight paintings, daily conversation with strangers and hundreds of photographs for me to realize that I was acting out a story that I had internalized: I was trying to play the role of exemplar." He came to understand that while he hoped he was an example of integration and progress, many people had no interest in following his lead. He also realized that other people of mixed heritage did not regard themselves as exemplary. After this, Yorke found himself learning in leaps and bounds. "I stopped more often to engage people in dialogue, whereas before I had only paused long enough to get their consent for a photograph. Because of these conversations, I was attacked daily by ephemeral bursts of clarity," he said.
Yorke's experience from his summer project helped him to choose a direction for his senior honors thesis. "Once I realized the limitation of my earlier approach, I chose to abandon the possibility of painting triptychs and referencing photographs. [...] Unnerved by the idea of capturing unknowing others, I was drawn to self-portraits."
Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts Betsey Garand, who taught Yorke in two classes during his senior year and is familiar with his thesis work, noted the shift. "At present, Zachary is focusing on self portraits. It seems apropos that with all of his investigations of others-family, neighborhood and historical past-that he has turned his focus on himself, both formally and psychologically. [...] He follows in the tradition of Jacob Lawrence, David Park and Bob Thompson in that his work is deeply personal, figurative and at times allegorical; combining contemporary references with historical analysis. He works with a combination of direct observation and invention," she said.
Yorke is also intrigued by how one can confront both oneself and a viewer through art. He quotes James Baldwin's book "The Fire Next Time." "The questions one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. One can only face in others what one can face in oneself," Baldwin writes. In the same vein, Yorke believes that it is important to step outside of one's comfort zone as often and as much as possible. "I believe that, to the extent that you stay safe, you miss something," he said. "People sometimes think the end goal is to be comfortable, and I'm not sure if that's it." Yorke writes that the goals for his thesis became fluid, but in the end, "I have come to regard my thesis as a becoming: the goal has always been to more fully engage the process of discovery."
Professor of Anthropology Deborah Gewertz, who wrote a recommendation for Yorke's Watson Fellowship, had a slightly different view of Yorke's thesis work. "I made it my business, with Zach's encouragement, to see some of his work. Bob Sweeney, his honors thesis advisor, let me into Zach's studio for a glimpse," she said. "From my, granted, anthropological perspective, his paintings were wonderful in capturing the richness of daily life. And from my (granted) far-from-sophisticated capacity to evaluate art for art's sake, I genuinely liked them."
Dealing with racism
Yorke explained his interest in race through his own background. He describes himself as "the post-Civil Rights movement bi-racial kid that most whites in Topeka like to think of as a symbol of reconciliation, and whom most blacks view with suspicion." Yorke explains his fascination with depicting. "Ever since I can remember," he wrote, "people have stared at me. Indeed, my first memories are of my six-year-old self engaged in hypnotic staring contests with strangers in public places. Although I had no language for it then, these staring contests left an imprint on me."
Yorke has also tried to scrutinize racism at the College. He remembers an event that occurred during his second year of college. The people who typically sat in the "marginalized students" section of Valentine, people in groups like the Black Students' Union, the Asian Students Association and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning group, organized to sit in the "white jock" section, he recalls. The action created quite a stir. Yorke described some of the anonymous comments written on the Daily Jolt online forum as "horrible." Afterwards, Yorke and friends organized a discussion on the topic that was held in the Red Room of Converse Hall. They approached varsity coaches, asking them to encourage players to attend, but "there were basically none." Yorke was disappointed. "What it could have been, it ultimately was not."
Yorke began contributing to discourse regarding racial issues early. "In high school I was on the Heritage Panel," he said. "We went around to businesses and grade schools and everyone got up to talk about instances of prejudice, what they did and what they'd do after. I learned a lot from that." Yorke remembers one especially poignant occasion that involved a little girl in Tonginoski, Kan., which Yorke explained is heavily populated by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The girl explained that she and her mother had once gone to pick up her older sister from some kind of party and she saw a burning cross outside. She said she knew that was bad, and asked what she could say to her sister. The event demonstrated the continued prevalence of racism and the lack of viable solutions.
Life at Amherst
Yorke has put his experiences to good use during three years as a resident counselor (RC). "I like the idea of having a part in making people's experiences of Amherst more safe and creating a comfortable living environment-that's basically the RC's statement of purpose," he said. Yorke will leave the College with other fond memories, as well. He spent the Interterms of his sophomore and junior years traveling in India with his friend Aatish Taseer '03 and in Japan with Michael Sypkens '03. Taseer recalls of Yorke, "In becoming an artist he took the risk of entering into a medium and a technique that he knew nothing about," Taseer said. "He shouldn't be credited with it too much, though, as I think it was almost out of his hands. It came, as I imagine it does for many artists, from an inescapable need in his personality to express."
Yorke has had his difficulties with life at the College, but he knows that it has been a valuable experience. "I've found Amherst a little socially claustrophobic. The flip-side to that is the sort of strange and beautiful composition of people, which is amazing," he said. "I think it changes people and shapes them, and frees people to leave their comfort zones and to really confront different sets of assumptions."
Leaving his mark
Yorke has also left his mark on many members of the College community. "I have spoken to him at length about his passionate, probing and perceptive engagement with the analyses and representations of racial differences, similarities and dilemmas and have, if you will excuse my colloquialism, been simply blown away by the kid," said Gewertz.
Senior Lecturer of English Helen Von Schmidt lamented, "To my great regret, I only came to know Zachary this semester. He is the kind of student teachers dream of." She described Yorke's response to several Akira Kurosawa films. "I began our class meeting by asking [students to comment on] Kurosawa's visual style. I wasn't expecting much-some brief speculation, some comments about particular shots they'd noticed. Zachary raised his hand. What he'd noticed was that there is no frame, not one, in a Kurosawa film, that couldn't stand alone simply as a beautifully composed image. I often take several class meetings to try to convince my students that this is so. It's such moments that make us persist in our work."
When Yorke completes his Watson Fellowship project, he will attend the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania to study the art in which he has already excelled, as well as to step outside of his comfort zone, and study anthropology and film.
Von Schmidt went on, "It speaks to his modesty, I think, that his name wasn't familiar to me when it appeared on my class list," said Von Schmidt. "Now that I know it, I keep hearing it-from colleagues who obviously have shared my pleasure in teaching him, from students who have long recognized how extraordinary he is. You just wish you could keep him around a bit longer."