Stim-U-Murals: The New Era of ARRA Murals

Newark NJ: cWOW's "It Takes a Village Mural"-2009  

By Michael B Schwartz

As we wade through what seems to be a never ending “recession” American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) monies have moved like molasses through the calcified state and federal bureaucracy to the local level. Finally projects and programs are getting started, hammers are starting to swing, welding torches are being fired up, and paint-brushes are swinging into action.

Federal ARRA funding has been used to successfully sustain five mural arts programs and I’m sure there are other examples that will surface in the coming months. Each of the projects below are, or soon will be, employing muralists. These works will become the first round in a new chapter of American mural history; the ARRA Era of Murals.

Arlene Goldbards’ article on CAN: The Long Hot Summer of Service: Community Artists on the Job broke the story on the first use of stimulus dollars for community arts work in Philadelphia, PA and Newark, NJ. These are dollars separate from ARRA funds that were redistributed by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Philadelphia, PA

The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program will receive 1.35 million to continue ground breaking youth violence reduction programs, restorative justice and a series of civic engagement projects that will result in the creation of numerous murals. Some examples of this work has already been unveiled and can be seen on the groups website.

Newark, NJ

City Without Walls  in New Jersey is an  amazing organization. In addition to creating new works, they are connecting their work to past traditions, like the work of muralist Ben Shahn. Ben was not only a celebrated photographer, and assistant to Diego Rivera on several projects including the Rockerfeller Plaza mural. Another Ben, Ben Goldman is the executive director of cWOW and a visual artist. What I love about this organization is the spirit of innovation in the face of adversity. You may recall Mr. Goldman as the author of the “Arts Stimulus Plan for New Jersey and the Nation”. This beautiful concise proposal called for one percent of ARRA to be directed towards the arts.

cWOW celebrated seven new works in 2009, with many new projects in the pipeline. I consider this project to be among the most articulate, inspiring and tested programs in the nation. Clearly this model has provided meaningful, and measurable impacts that illustrate just how the arts can be used to “retrofit” our economy.

In addition to these two early success stories news is breaking of other visionary communities who are using murals as part of ARRA. I also looked at a series of roadway and percent for art projects, but have not yet been able to verify that these projects were designating monies specifically towards murals.

Helena, MT

This band shell in Montana will get a new community mural with ARRA funding.

Across the country in Helena, Montana, stimulus money is being used to create a mural in the band shell at Memorial Park. In December they had a community brainstorm meeting, an opportunity for the public to decide what they would like to see in the mural. This process literally practices democracy, and illustrates the power of community arts projects. While there are some critics of this project, a budget has been established for the artwork and the city is moving ahead with a request for proposals process. This is good news for the many talented artists who have made Helena a beacon for culture and creativity.

Carson City, NV

Artists mock up for project proposal.

Another proposed project will bring a history mural to the highways of Carson City Nevada.  The History in Motion Project proposed by the city and Gardeners Reclaiming Our Waysides (GROW) would blend murals with horticultural elements to depict the history and life of the famous Nevada town. Some funds have been secured for the project, and they also are still in the public input phase. You can check out what they are doing, and follow their progress on the City’s website.

Chicago, IL

The Green Hills Community Wall Mural is a "community wall" ceramic mural that will extend the length of the Green Hills Public Library. The mural’s theme will reflect the historical and cultural elements related to the area and it’s residents. You are invited to bring a “small rock or stone from your country of origin and it will be installed in the mural to symbolize the diversity of our Library District”. There are community workshops Monday, March 22^nd from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. 

Hartford, CT

The Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program is by far my favorite, so I save it for last. While in Phase 1 of this program there were no specific murals funded, the list of projects funded warmed my heart and will be an inspiration to you as well.

They are now in phase two of their process, and it’s an exciting model I hope municipalities will explore. Artists can get grants of $ 5- 25,000 to support their businesses. The grant is intended to help “Arts-centric businesses, organizations and individual artists play an important role in building and sustaining economic vibrancy: they employ people, spend money locally, revitalize neighborhoods, and are a cornerstone of tourism.  As an indirect economic benefit, tourists patronize restaurants, parking lots, hotels, and other businesses, which employ Hartford residents.”

Keep in mind that any community in the country could have done this. Hats off to David Panagore, the Director of the Hartford Development Services , and the Greater Hartford Arts Council. You are a beacon for the nation and deserve an award of the highest merit.

In San Francisco the Department of Human Services is administering federal stimulus funds to cover 100% of wage through September of this year. I know of at least one arts group that has used this program to find a position. You can find out more here.

Conclusion

Each city, town, county and state has taken a different approach with their ARRA funding. Clearly many communities have discovered a way to integrate the arts into their strategy for economic recovery and blazed a path for others to follow.

The mural projects I uncovered using ARRA funds are infused with a democratic spirit. While this process is inherent in the community mural movement, it’s interesting to note this is a very different methodology than that employed by WPA era muralists. We’ll have to wait and see what the long term out-comes are to the ARRA era murals and if they will be compared to the great WPA era murals. 

Looking towards a new decade many continue to aspire for a new framework for cultural policy in the United States. Opportunities exist in the reauthorization of pieces of legislation, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) not the least among them. New sources of funding that promote “community engagement”, “innovation” and “retrofitting” are fertile soil for community artists.

As in the days of our grandparents and great grandparents these are times when we’re forced to lift ourselves up by our own boot-straps. What I’m hoping is that the demonstration projects that are emerging from the grassroots and enlightened cities like Hartford, Helena, Newark, Philadelphia and Carson City pave the way for a new national creative works program, and as described in Art and the Public Purpose one that, “Uses creativity for the common good, engages all of us., builds on cultural memory, puts artists to work to support cultural recovery, stand for free expression and supporting democratic media.”

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.
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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.