WEBVTT

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Okay, go.

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Do I need to read it?

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Yes.

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Jose, interview number two, scene one, take one.

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Roll one.

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Roll one.

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Okay, have a seat.

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Feel them when you're ready.

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Okay, could you talk about that?

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Oh, about art being political, right?

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Okay, the reason I say that art is political is because everything that is painted has got to do with the environment, politics, or what's happening in the community.

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So, like in the case of the Cisipede mural, it was at the time when the farm workers were going through the strikes.

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They were having trouble with pesticides.

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The children were being treated, you know, for, you know, eating stuff that was contaminated with chemicals.

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So at that time, you know, the organization was boycotting lettuce.

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They probably still are now, you know, but at that time especially, they were boycotting lettuce and grapes.

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And that was the time when the government, despite the boycott, they were buying grapes, you know.

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In other words, trying to break the thing about the boycott.

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So when we were going to do the mural there, it was done in a couple of weeks, you know.

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It happened that some of the farm workers were in town for a meeting.

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So they said, if you're going to paint something, why don't you paint something to support our cause, because we're going to be in the neighborhood, you know, pestling out leaflets, and it will help as part of a campaign or, you know, for propaganda purposes.

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So that was the case of that mural.

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It came about because the time the things were happening and also the farm workers were in the area organizing people to boycott the products, you know, from the grapevines from California.

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Jose, scene one, take two, roll one.

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All art is political.

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All art is political, beginning from even the Renaissance, because when De Vinci was doing the 16th Chapel or whatever, he was painting art to support the pope.

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When the French painter, Chardon, whatever his name was, was doing art, even though it seemed like he wasn't political, you know, he would paint bread, food.

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It was in the middle of the French Revolution that he did that, you know, and there was people who were fighting, you know, for crumbs, you know.

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And also when he painted bread and crumbs and food, it was something that the people didn't have, you know, so even still life would be considered political.

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And even now, you know, even if they paint the ocean, it's political, because what happened at this thing in Alaska, you know, the Exxon and oil companies are involved in it.

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And to say that painting the ocean is not political is not understanding what art really is, you know, because there is no such thing as art for art's sake in my book.

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Okay, scene two, take two, roll one.

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Okay, any time.

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The mural at the Chicago Park District workers' room, as we call it, you know, or labor room, they call it, or the tool room, where we paint the mural, deals with the people working in the park.

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So it includes women, men, black and white.

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And of course, the reason it's important, because a lot of the workers participated in doing it, well not a lot of them, but at least six or seven, you know, and the rest participated in either criticizing it or supporting it, you know.

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Some liked it, some didn't, you know.

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Some said that there should be more women, and some said that in the first place they didn't have enough women working there.

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In reality, they don't, you know, in landscaping, you know.

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And we took, we did it during the wintertime, you know, during dinner time, in the afternoons, or whenever it was snowing hard, you know, we didn't have nothing else to do.

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Well, we had a lot to do, you know, but we took time to do it anyway.

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Okay, scene three, take one, roll one.

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Okay, whenever you're ready.

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The murals in this community call for different themes for the simple reason that, like in Chicago, there's different ethnic groups.

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If you're the one in the black community, you will call for something different, let's say in a Polish community, you know.

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You know, there are people who are working or members of the working class, that doesn't mean that their backgrounds are the same, you know.

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So it calls for different themes and perhaps different colors.

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For instance, there was one done at McDonald's on Bell Mountain Poleski, which dealt with the Polish culture, and it has a lot of costumes that the Polish people wear.

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It talks about Polish struggles.

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In the Mexican neighborhood, there's different things, such as the struggle with the farm workers, the demonstrations against the immigration.

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So, of course, it calls for a different theme, like the mural, it was dealing with the farm works and the community.

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And in case of the one on 28th and Reachway, which is called We Will Stop the Storm, it deals with the community, but in the community itself, there's different ethnic backgrounds.

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There's black, there's a few Polish, and then there's a few Arabs, which you don't have in some areas, but there you have them.

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So, in talking with the people there, the Arabs have a lot to say, especially with what's going on in the Middle East.

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And the Mexicans have a lot to say with what's going on with the immigration.

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And then, of course, the Polish have a lot to say because they claim that at one time it was an old white neighborhood, and that now it changed.

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So, of course, the theme there would completely be something to work within that community.

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So, in doing that, we tell them, We Will Stop the Storm, and what storm we're talking about is the storm that they mentioned,

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like the storm in the Middle East where they're being brutalized by the Zionists, the storm here in Chicago where they're being brutalized by the immigration,

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or we have some quotes there by people like Bapa Vakan, who had to leave the country because his life was in danger, and his life was in danger because he's a revolutionary.

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So, of course, the theme completely has got to change. It can't be the same in all the neighborhoods.

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So, it shows a dove that looks like a thunderbird and also might look like an eagle.

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But in the background, there's a storm that the people have talked about.

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And instead of going about doing a lot of figures, doing a lot of pyramids, or doing a lot of either Egyptian or Mexican pyramids, we use symbols.

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So, what we use was the storm as the problem that they are having, which would include all the people.

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We didn't have to put pictures of the immigration, pictures of the Zionists being up on the air with people, or the immigration, brutalizing the newly arrived.

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So, we use the storm as a symbol for all those things that are happening.

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And also, we showed a picture of a boy and a girl, one on each side.

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One of them being that the girl is stepping on a swastika, which still symbolizes racism.

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And in some of the neighborhoods that we go to now, there are swastikas that are pretty well left alone, meaning that maybe there's a lot of people who are sympathetic to the way some people think, especially in the United States.

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People like the right wing, because they don't want blacks moving in.

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So, the theme was, we will stop the storm, and the storm was the problem that these people are having, and the problems that minorities and other people who don't adhere to the system have.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.