On the subject of compassion in art, Weems says about her own life and process (in the forthcoming Art21 Season 5 book):

"There are ideas about compassion—what you sacrifice for compassion, what you give up, what you choose not to live with so that you can express that. But we all sacrifice something for our compassion in some way. We're giving up something so that something else larger can happen, so that something bigger than you can take place. Sometimes we sacrifice our families. Sometimes we sacrifice other levels of interpersonal communication so that we have that larger relationship with questions that move and shape the world.

And so (and I don't think that I'm being naïve or sentimental or dramatic about it) I think that I've sacrificed an enormous amount of interpersonal comfort to pursue aspects of compassion, to pursue them, to look at them and to say, "Yes, I will step up to this. I want this too. And if I want this in this time, in this moment, then certain things have to be sacrificed (because I don't know how to do it all)." Sometimes you sacrifice too much. You find yourself out on a limb and not knowing really quite how to get back down the tree. But it's the space that you're in because you have taken the risk. I'm not unaware of the sacrifices and, at times, whom your compassion hurts. It's not all moving in one direction. It's complicated, as the work is complicated."