THEY WANT YOU TO PERFUME THE SEWERS

Summer is a great time to read. If your passion is community murals you're in for a special blog treat. I’ve been rereading “Towards a People’s Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (1977) ” by Eva Crocroft, John Pitman Weber, and James Cockcroft. So I was jazzed to see a sort of compendium book just released entitled “On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City” by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman of Artmakers. The release of this book following the elections and conversations about a new WPA is perfect timing. There is a fantastic conversation that accompanies this book on the New York Times blog.

So it’s in this spirit that I offer you, my dear readers, a bit of delicious summer reading. My friend and colleague muralist, author and teacher Mike Alewitz send me this speech by Meridel Le Sueur (1902-1996) delivered in 1988, by video, to the Alliance for Cultural Democracy conference in San Francisco. Meridel Le Sueurs' powerful voice continues to inspire and teach us. She literally had a powerful, compassionate, commanding voice and presence.

"An Injury to One is an Injury to All" Mural, Mike Alewitz

No matter your political perspective this writing helps fill some important gaps in community art history. In this period of great hope and transformation looking back at our roots is critical as we decide how best to proceed.


THEY WANT YOU TO PERFUME THE SEWERS

by Meridel Le Sueur

I bring greetings from the Middle West and also from Time. On February 22, I'll be 88 years old. I've been a writer, an artist in the Middle West, trying to find out what the true image is of our time and our country.

I believe that now is the most wonderful period of my life because for the first time we can think of a global world: a global world of art, a global world of expression, a global audience, a global people. Global was not a word in my time that you even spoke about. It wasn't in your consciousness to be global. Today the consciousness, the rising of the global people, is so wonderful, so tremendous. Such energy is released and we are released as artists from servitude to the establishment, to the death force of imperialism.

Engels said in 1877 there were only two subjects for the artist, for the creator. One was the moribund dying society, 'the corpse' he called it. The other was the newborn, being born out of the corpse, the new people, the new consciousness, the young child, the image of humanism.


Now we see this actually happening. It's no longer a theory to say "the rising of the working class " as we used to say in 1916 in the First World War. It seemed like a dream. Today you look at your television in the evening and you see the people rising. You see the children throwing rocks at the army; you see the brutal resistance of the dying class, 'the corpse' as Engels said.

Imperialism is dying. I don't think they have any way of even saving themselves. They're committing suicide by cutting off the food, causing famines, exporting our products to other countries and selling them back to us. It would be like an Alice in Wonderland death if it wasn't so horrible.

I don't belittle the dangers of the bomb at all, but even these dangers very often bring us together in unity, in a global unity and certainly in a consciousness of the dangers. We see now that we didn't even dream of the viciousness, of the deadliness, of the willingness to risk complete global and cosmic death; of the capitalist class. The middle class is also falling down into the working class and betraying its interests. They have too much to protect to move against death. Death is the only product of imperialism today. It's an obvious problem. They tell us they are going to kill us, and they do kill us.

So the artist has a great wonder and a tremendous influx of new life and at the same time has a great responsibility, because he must bring his skills to the rising people who contain the creation of the new world. It no longer exists in the middle class. It no longer is any good to get the grants. They just want you to perfume the sewers. They need artists to bring perfume to the terrible stench of their death. It isn't doing the artist any good. There is no place to go except to the struggle of the people today. There is no place for the artist. There is no artist arising except from the struggle of the people.

We see now that all culture comes from the people, comes from the struggle of the people. In America, middle-class culture has obscured the great vigor of American people's culture. I came up from the farm culture. When I was young there was farm music, the farm songs, a great culture of the Midwest farm and the democratic forces in the Middle West, and radical organizations like the IWW.

The IWW is something for you to look at because, there, culture was part. It wasn't separate. It was something you just brought out. Culture was part of the struggle. You could only be a poet or an artist if you were a worker, a revolutionary. The IWW taught me that culture is part of the struggle of the people. It's not separate. They never had a meeting they didn't open with poetry. They painted. They had cartoons. Their culture was immense, but more than that, it was a culture of the people. I once saw a group of IWWs learning poetry, learning Walt Whitman, in preparation for going to prison because they didn't have books, so they learned poetry. When going to the same prison they each would learn a different poem so they could bring their culture to prison.

Culture was part—it created a tremendous audience. In 1913, John Reed worked on a tremendous production in Madison Square Garden, put on by the strikers of Patterson. We used to put on affairs here from the farm. We had music, poetry, books. There is a tremendous culture, which is almost unknown and is now in danger of disappearing, like the black culture, like the ethnic cultures of the Norwegians and the Scandinavians.

This is coming up in our culture like a Vesuvian release of energy and its just beginning. Recently in the Austin strike, there was a wonderful example of the artists emerging out of the struggle. They've had a mural, which the reactionaries destroyed.* They had wonderful music. They had theater that just came out of the struggle. This is where it comes from. Go where it is. Go there. That's the only place there's life. That's the only place where there are any kind of images.

*P-9 Mural Dedication, 1986

The new images are coming from these struggles. The farm struggle recently here, for example, was one of the greatest uprisings of culture in the Middle West. The grief, the tragedy, the images... People, farmers, committed suicide. They were looking for images of their struggle: seeing their struggle as a long history, for the first time, as inevitable.

In the thirties, the workers and farmers saw that the factories would open up again, saw that there would be again prosperity even. Today, they know there is not going to be a "good" war. They know the factories are not going to reopen. The work has been exported to cheap labor in foreign countries. The steelworkers know as they are struggling and struggling to open those mills. The worker knows that there is going to be no "good" war. That there is no prosperity. That there is not going to be an end to exploitation. This in itself is a great cultural vision, a vision that is true, a vision that is possible. It is not only possible, it is necessary; it is the only continuation of the struggle of man to exist.

So I feel wonderful for you young people. It's a wonderful thing to be here now, stripping some of the illusions of bourgeois culture—the illusions of getting into those galleries, the illusion of becoming a prostitute to bourgeois culture. It’s not possible anymore, except maybe for a few. The grants are being cut off. They're not going to give out these grants anymore. They didn't work. You didn't come in and perfume the sewers. And thank God, we're not going to have those kinds of grants anymore.

What we need now is something like the WPA where a democratic culture can be supported, and a democratic audience. One of the great things about the WPA was its raising of the audiences' consciousness. There was an audience for art; there was an audience for murals. We started here a farm collective, a painters' group for the farmers to paint during the winter and have farm exhibits, this is where your audience is. The middle class is not a rich audience anymore. They don't have the images anymore. They don't have the truth.

The hearings (Iran-Contra) were the greatest thing to show you what the middle class does to support the lie. Culture is used to support the lie, to cover the lie. Language is used to cover the lie. In those hearings, language became a tool to cover not only lying, but the death and destruction of our whole society.

So this is what is happening. It's revealed. It's not a secret any longer. They can't keep it a secret. What those bastards do in the morning is on TV in the evening. It's impossible to be secretive. They tell upon each other, in fact. They can't keep a secret from each other. You are living in a time when the front door is open, the road is open.

You don't even hardly have to choose—it's between life or death. It's between what supports creative culture and what is death to it. It isn't even a choice. It's inevitable. It's just there. You have to live it. You have to be it. You have a chance to become part of this struggle. As the Communist Manifesto ends; the only people who will save the world are those who have nothing to lose but their chains.

This is what we see in the colonial countries. People driven to hunger, to death, who literally have nothing to lose, who really rise up on the horizon on all scenes. Those great meetings are not any longer the little meetings, but the meetings of millions of people demanding life, demanding the image, the true image. So this is what you have now for your life; to go into this great life, this great new force.

We used to say, "Workers of the World, Unite." Well now we have no choice. It's inevitable. They have to unite or die. So it’s not a dream any longer. It's not a hope any longer. It's a presence, a wonderful living presence.

I'd just like to read a piece of mine that I wrote years ago, and this I hope would be the keystone in the temple of your meeting together:

Let us all return.

It is the people who give birth to us, to all culture, who by their labors create all material and spiritual values.

No art can develop until it perpetuates and penetrates deeply into the life of the people.

The source of American culture lies in the historic movement of our people, and the artist must become voice, messenger, organizer, a wakener, sparking the inflammable silence, reflection back to the courage and the beauty. He must return really to the people, partisan and alive, with warmth, abundance, excess, confidence: without reservations, being cold and merely reasonable; or craftiness, writing one thing, and believing another; not being a superior person, even superior in knowledge, in theoretical knowledge, an ideological giant, but bereft of heart and humanity.

Capitalism is a world of ruins, junk piles of machines, men, women, piles of dust, floods, erosions, masks to cover rapacity.

To these stinging sounds the people carry their young, in the shades of their grief, in the thin shadow of their hunger, hope and crops in their grief, in the dark of the machine, only they have the future in them.

Only they.

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THEY WANT YOU TO PERFUME THE SEWERS
Google Doc Organized by Mike Alewitz and Denny Mealy.

A remarkable writer and life-long agitator, the biography of Meridel Le Sueur can be found at http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00323.xml

*P-9 Mural Dedication/ 1986. Mural by striking meat packers - Local P-9. Dedicated to then-imprisoned "terrorist" Nelson Mandela. Destroyed by UFCW union bureaucrats.
_______________________________________________

Long Live Northland Poster Collective!

It’s not often that I report on issues outside the world of community murals, but it seems that every day now history is being made. I was shocked and saddened to hear that after 30 years Northland Poster Collective is closing it’s doors. In the early 90’s I maintained a small office for the Alliance for Cultural Democracy (ACD) at the collective. I would help out here and there as needed in between ACD tasks. The collective has produced numerous designs for progressive causes over the years, and you will still be able to but some of them after the storefront closes. None the less my heart sank when I read the news. Ricardo Levins Morales worked for 30 years overcoming one obstacle after the other, keeping the ship afloat. NPC has been a constant source of inspiration in an art world all too often consumed by greed, inflated ego’s and elitism. Against the backdrop of the art-industrial-complex Northland produced inspiring images that have become hallmarks of the progressive movement. Standing up against corporate greed is never easy, but Northland did so with grace and humor.

If your fast you can still purchase items at half price. It’s not the last chapter by any means, there is life after Northland and as Ricardo writes “we will see you on the picket line”. And that we certainly will.

We will never be disappeared.

Arts for All Mural Project

Sonoran Bioregion, Tucson, AZ - Recently I worked with winners of a “Graffiti Art Competition” that was facilitated by Arts for All (AFA) located at 2520 N. Oracle Rd.
in Tucson. Young artists throughout Tucson were invited to submit designs, the winners would be paid to do a mural for walls in the AFA parking lot. A group of community jurors met to select seven finalists. The winners went on to develop large to-scale color designs that again were approved by the jurors.


I was asked to help facilitate the transfer and painting process. This was a first for emerging muralists Roberto, Amy, Arisa, Josh, Jesus, Jello and Lizzy. The artists brought their individual creative sensibilities and experiences to this project and that shows in the final work. Working with them was fun, encouraging as they would switch from aerosol to paint, at first reluctantly, but acrylics have a way of growing on you. Some of the artists stayed in one media, they all created bright, vibrant, beautiful and clear images.

One of the fascinating things about this project was the intergenerational pedagogy. Artist Carol Kestler, who helped conceive this project and was a mentor of mine for many years, imprinting countless lessons on what in means to be a teaching artist. Carol founded Arts Genesis over 30 years ago, and has helped to train dozens of community teaching artists. That experience, richly informing my career, was imparted to a new generation through the Arts for All Youth Mural. This is the very essence of community art. One generation practices, gathers, builds upon and passes on the knowledge of past cultural workers.


We met weekends for several months transferring the designs and adding layers of color. We used a mix of aerosols and acrylic paints slowly covering the wall. Each session started with a short meeting where we had a chance to check in, scan mural images, write in our journals and talk about what we planned on working on next. These meetings were brief, the artists were eager to paint.

The artists explored the potential of acrylics combined with aerosol. In this piece by Jello you can see that each letter has a different surface treatment. The aerosols drip and blend, with the strong black lines gestured in with aerosol and fine-tuned with acrylics.

Video - Muralists describe their work.

Finally be early May just as the summer heat set in we added our final touches and sealed the mural.

The artists spoke about their work at the May 9, 2009 unveiling. They were proud of their work, having set out to accomplish something for the first time and succeeding. Several said that they thought they could do better, or wanted to go back and change some things. Any muralist working from their heart understands the constant desire to improve our work.


A special thanks goes out to the larger support community that made this project possible. In these time of budget cuts this project shows how a tiny bit of money and a ton of good will can go a long way. So thank you to the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Tucson Pima Arts Council, the Mural Panel and Arts for All staff. A special shout out to Valerie Burnside for getting the ball rolling, Christine, Janelle, Frances for assisting, and of course Harriett and Marcia Berger.








A Note on the Health Impacts of our Trade:

Why do we wear respirators when using air-brushes, solvents and aerosols? We love the effects we can get from aerosol paint can’s, the ability to have large gesture marks and lines, the speed, the way it fills cracks in the wall, the way you can blend colors and get trippy special effects. Unfortunately one of our favorite tools contains propellants that have serious health and environmental risks and are considered hazardous waste . These Chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) were originally used as propellants and then banned in 1978 because they deplete the ozone layer. In the 80’s hydrocarbon propellants replaced CFCs until it was found that they contribute to smog. Since that time new propellants known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are being used. These include and 1,1,-difluoroethane (Propellant 152A) and 1, 1, 1, 2,-tetrafluoromethane (Propellant 134A).

Acrylic paints have a smaller carbon footprint, but also have their drawbacks. Golden Colors has some valuable health and safety information.

What do you think?

Paulo Freire Freedom School Mural

I was recently invited to facilitate a mural with Kristin Bloom’s students at the Paulo Freire Freedom School in Tucson, AZ. This is a very unique school with a focus environmental and social justice curriculum. It’s a busy place with active parent and community involvement. The school is truly a living testimony to work of the great Brazilian popular educator Paulo Freire (1921-97).

Many thanks to the Tucson YMCA “It’s Time to Talk Youth Forum” for sponsoring this beautiful mural located in the stairwell. Congratulations to the 13 students artists on a successful project!

The students will report on this mural project in their own words.

Paulo Freire Freedom School Mural

“The theme of the mural is breaking down the walls of prejudice and becoming one. A giant mural focusing on peace.

On the left of the mural, two different races are split between a big wall. The brick wall is how we are separated by racism. The heart with the flames represents love falling to bind the whites and the blacks together, bounded by love. Love breaks down the wall of hate and brings us together.

The people represent segregation and the heart is supposed to be crashing down on the wall so it lets the people be together. The people in robes represent how all the cultures came together

The middle one has everyone at Kiva and the pole in the middle is supposed to be everyone coming together into the world.

All the colors blend together and all the major problems were finally solved. The love for each other is painted onto the wall. Our Kiva brings us together. Creating roots to a wonderful world. Kiva itself is a miracle, and all of us together in peace and love. A strong wall, but only love can break it down. One whole community coming together. No one fighting or anything. Everyone at Kiva being one big kind and caring diverse community. No segregation, only integration.

In the third section, there are two faces kissing. The faces are light "white" and dark "black" coffee being poured from Chinese and Native American style cups. On the tea cup the man in the maze is painted on it and the man in the maze is the symbol of the tribe Tohono O’odham in Arizona. The blue teacup is an illustration of a Chinese teacup. It represents different ethnicities coming together and meeting peacefully. No color or person is better. "

Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery

On Tuesday a group of community artists and organizers met at the White House for a historic first. The meeting was facilitated by Community Arts leaders Arlene Goldbard, Caron Atlas from the Pratt Center, Claudine Brown of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and arts organizer Billy Wimsatt. White House "hippster in chief" Yosi Sergant was instrumental in arranging this meeting. This was an opportunity to begin a conversation with the White House on how community artist organizers can contribute to the economic recovery of our nation. We left the meeting excited to start organizing, moving directly to Busboys and Poets.

I will be posting more details of our meeting and ways YOU can get involved. Its going to take all of us to transform our economy, and this meeting is an indicator that we all have a seat a the table. Check out the newly formed Office of Public Engagement. You can read more about this historic meeting in the Washington Post.

On Wednesday several of us headed to "the hill" to lobby. After a number of exciting meetings we are more confident than ever that cultural recovery is just around the corner.

Bronx Wash Community Mural Starts

We've started project blog for Northwest Neighborhood residents where you can contribute your ideas, images, stories and poems.