José - Interview RL #1 Murals 10/15

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But we came up with that, we wanted to ask you.

And if you think, you know, if there's other things that you think we should be asking about the murals or what you do, please feel free just to redirect us.

Sure, okay.

So, I mean, just for starters, we wanted to know a little bit about your background, where you came from and how you got up here.

Well, like I said, originally I'm from San Antonio, Texas, you know.

And how I got here, I mean, this other guy used to, you know, drift around the country, you know, because it's the only way we could get around, you know.

So he used to come to Missouri, the whole Midwest, you know, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.

And one time it just happened that I came and started working here and I just stayed, you know, around 64.

And I just stayed here up to now, over 20 years.

So what kind of work were you doing when you were here? Well, at that time we were just doing like seasonal work, you know, like we worked during the summer and then go back.

And when I came in 64 and got a job and I started working, then started getting a regular check, so I started, one year led to another, you know, and just stayed here all this long.

And that's when I just enrolled in the art schools, you know, like going to the Art Institute and American Academy of Art, they call it.

Take figure drawing and a little painting, not too much.

Well, not really, you know.

I wasn't doing any work, artwork, you know, like professional artwork.

I was doing artwork but not like making any money out of it or nothing.

Just like for my own benefit, I was just painting and drawing.

And I had met this guy that just got out of the living worse cancers in the penitentiary.

And this guy could paint, you know, he was a good artist.

And he said, you should take up painting instead of just drawing, you know, you should paint.

And I said, well, I can't do that, you know, he told me the stuff he did while he was in prison, you know.

He said, if I can do it, you can do it, you know.

And I said, well, maybe I can.

And so I bought some paints and started, you know, messing around with them.

Because everything was black and white.

I used to do everything in black and white.

I didn't have enough confidence to use color, you know.

I said, well, I can't do it.

I'm still not that good at it, you know, but I do it anyway, you know.

So when you were for Skyhead and that was before the mural movement? Well, the murals, I think started in the early 70s, I would say.

Bill Walker and John Weber and a lot of people were doing murals.

And the Mexicans over there on 18th Street, they started doing some stuff.

And it happened that I met John, you know, one of the, we were in a conference, some place in Gary, Indiana, you know.

Miners Conference or something like that.

And he happened to be there, he just happened to be starting on the UE Hall, you know, was going to, you know.

So he asked me if I could help him.

I said, yeah.

Even though I couldn't, I know much about painting, I guess.

I said, I can do that, you know.

Once I got up there, I said, what the hell are you doing? And the guy was saying, what did you learn to paint? I said, well, I don't know how to paint that well, you know, but if I see what you're doing, maybe I can, you know.

Knit came out pretty good anyway, you know.

Worked out pretty good.

Because I had a knack for it anyway, since I started painting about a year before that, you know.

So that was your first mural? Mmm, yeah, that was the first one that I can recall, yeah.

At the same time, I was doing another one on 18th Street with some kids, you know.

Called Si Se Puede, I don't know if you've seen it or not.

Oh, I love that.

And then we started another one in Amherst.

John was doing about two or three of them in Amherst College, you know.

So I went up there and we used to, you know, I helped them out on a couple of them, you know.

There was about three at the same time we were doing.

We left the one at UE, you know, for the time being, so we could paint outside and also do the one at Amherst.

So can we back up a little bit? It seems that sort of political things or union things or some kind of, those kinds of violence were what got you into this in the first place.

Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, that would be, in my case, I guess it was, because like I was doing, like I was telling Susan one time, I was doing some cartooning, you know, for newspapers, you know, for like workers' papers.

And we had a paper at work.

We used to meme a graph called People Get Ready, you know, and they met to the song, you know, People Get Ready.

And some of the guys used to do all the writing and I used to do the cartoons for them.

We just gave it away.

We couldn't sell it, you know, we'd give it away.

Sometimes we couldn't give it away either, you know.

Because he was, you know, speaking against the company, they would, you know, people would say, no, I don't want that kind of material because I might lose my job or whatever, you know.

We were trying to get the UE back, you know, the United Electrical Workers' Bank, because during the 50s and 60s they had been thrown out of there because of the Center for Wisconsin, what's his name? McCarthy or something like that, yeah.

And they had been thrown out and the IAM had went in, you know.

So at the time it was an open shop, you know, you could join the union or not join it.

So me and these other people got together, we were trying to make it a closed, a closed shop, you know.

And at the same time trying to get the UE back, we figured that the union was still good at that time, you know.

They're not now, you know, but they were there, you know.

And I figured, you know, just help them out and trying to organize the people into, and we got enough people to work but not enough, you know.

So that was it for that, you know.

They got elected again, you know, the ones that were there before the IAM, International Machines or whatever.

And then in 1982 they closed the plant, you know, so that was the end of that.

But it was these causes that kind of got you into...

Well, it wasn't actually the causes because I was already doing work, but the work that I was doing was, you know, had a lot to do with politics because like I was telling Susan too, you know, all art is politics anyway.

I don't think there's anything that's painted that doesn't...

it's not directed at some mentality or some outlook or some class of people, you know.

That's what I think.

Like when Rivera painted the murals in Mexico, he was telling the story of the Mexican Revolution, see.

Because the people, most of the people couldn't read or write, you know.

So visually they could see.

They had never seen a lot of the big shots, you know.

But they saw Huerta, they saw Porfirio Diaz, they saw different characters in the revolution that they had never met before, you know.

And it was politics.

And it still is, you know, like whatever they paint is political.

Whether it be like you go to the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico, there's a lot of ropes and bricks put together.

And it's political because the guy that did it must have some kind of politics.

And he must have been directing that thought to somebody that he thought might, you know, receive it, you know.

A worker looked at it and he didn't know what it is.

He said, what the hell is that? And it doesn't make sense.

Because I've seen people talking about art in Mexico, you know.

But they see something that makes sense to them, like a woman running a machine or somebody doing the work of an architect laying bricks.

They can relate to that, see.

So that's what I'm saying, see that all art is not detached from politics, you know, like an old Chinese friend of mine used to say.

Yeah, you know, Mao Zedong used to say that there is no art for art's sake, you know, that all art is political, you know.

It's a long quote, you know, but I can't remember it all.

All I know is that he said that it's political, everything's political in art.

Well, not only here but in L .A., you know.

Like I said, this is my opinion, somebody else might say something else.

But it was, people were trying to identify themselves, you know, like the Mexicans in L .A.

and living in the U .S.

would say, well, we're not Mexicans, but we're not Anglo -Saxon either, see.

They say we're Chicanos, you know.

It's the correct word because now they call us Hispanics.

When I was in San Antonio they used to say, you're Latin Americans.

And before they used to say, you're Spanish Americans, you know.

Or you're this or you're that.

And the most advanced, you know, of the working class, even though they know that much about history, they say, well, these people, you know, they call us different kinds of names.

We're not, how would you like it if somebody said you were British and you're not, you know.

So they say, well, they call themselves Chicanos, you know, up to the, even now, of course, I can remember.

And that makes an identity, saying, well, we're not from Mexico, we ain't got on against Mexico.

And we're not Anglo -Saxons, we're Chicanos, you know, with Mexican roots or whatever, you know.

And the Mules were for the purpose of saying this is what we are and this is what we believe in.

They took paintings of Ray Tijerina of New Mexico.

They took paintings of Cesar Chavez.

And then the more political, we took pictures of Che Guevara, as you can see, on the 18th Street.

And, you know, saying that Latinos also have a history and they also support their heroes, whether some other people like them or not, you know.

Because me being from San Antonio, you know, the people that they say were our heroes were like the people who conquered Texas, you know, like David Crockett and Sam Houston or whatever, you know.

And even as seniors we were, we said, these people are not our heroes, you know.

Why do we have to look up to these people, you know? They have this picture of David Crockett.

You go into the Alamo even now and you see John Wayne, you know.

And then they got this white marble thing outside, you know.

They said, this is a monument to our forefathers.

They said, well, not mine, you know.

On the contrary, it's a monument to white supremacy, you know, siloed, colonialism.

So those kind of sentiments were really strong in the late 60s? Mm -hmm.

And people would, including myself, would try to say what we believe in the murals, you know.

Different, and they were pretty strong, what we said, because the Latin was destroyed by the right -wing people, you know.

They put swastikas or throw paint on them or, you know, they were well done.

Like the one on Western 18th Street, I don't know if you've seen it.

What's it in the corner? It's a, it's a, it's a, it's like a film of a camera rolling.

And it's got a lot of sections, you know, like those packets.

And it's got different, it's against intervention in Central America.

So, so really, you know, all are more political, like I said, you know.

I haven't seen one that's not, you know.

Even if it's just a line on the wall, they're saying something.

Or just like different colors, you know.

Mm -hmm.

So who are they speaking to? Who are you talking to? Well, a lot of times, in my case, it's directed at the younger people, you know.

Because they being the most daring and the most, whatever, you know, they have more spunk.

And they can grasp certain things, you know, whether it be negative or positive.

And the thing is to tell them that there is a different way of thinking besides what they see on TV, you know.

Or what they see the, especially like a lot of police, cop shows, you know.

They have a lot of cop shows.

And they see that as being part of the American way, you know.

They see John Wayne, they see Karate Moves or whatever.

And then when they see these murals, you know, depicting culture that really belongs to them, they say, well, maybe I can relate to that too, you know.

Because a lot of these kids, some of them don't even speak Spanish, you know.

And it's on the count that they think that to speak English is better than to speak Spanish, you know.

That they're accepted more.

And with the murals like this one that we're doing, it shows two young people, you know, taking over certain aspects of history, you know.

And it says that it's up to them and the people now, but mostly up to them to get things straight, you know, whatever needs to be straight, you know.

To change politics or to get rid of a system that's bad, you know.

And it shows that they can get involved and it shows that the mural itself shows that they can do artwork too because there's about ten kids working on it.

And a lot of people figure that maybe they can do it, but with good direction, they can do it, you know.

I say anybody can paint.

If I can paint, anybody can paint.

You got that wrong.

So what, a lot of things, what you're saying is really interesting.

There's a lot of things I'd like to ask about it, but one thing is like what does it do to bring those kids in? What do you hope to achieve by having the kids work with you? Well, it's not like, like if we do something like that, that they'll forever be enlightened about certain things.

But I can always walk into this community and see a lot of kids and they say, well I worked in that mural, I did this and I did that, you know.

As opposed to, you can hear in this neighborhood, some guy got shot right in the corner, you know, because he was wearing his cap lopsided or wearing the wrong color jacket, you know.

See, you know what I mean? It's the other side of the coin.

That not everything is negative, like Tristan was saying.

You walk down this neighborhood, everybody looks friendly, you know.

It's not that people are hostile, but something is causing those gangs to act that way, you know.

And part of the thing that's doing it is the drugs, you know.

Because you make a lot of money selling drugs.

It's better than working at McDonald's and if a guy's getting $3 an hour there, whatever.

And he can sell drugs and make $50 a day or more at school, you know.

He's liable to do that, you know.

If he's not, if his parents or whatever, counselors haven't put something different in his head.

And I figure that the art, as far as the community murals are doing that, you know.

Giving them a more positive way of exercising their energies.

Back in the late 60s again, what were the main themes that you guys were painting? What were the main issues? 60s and 70s, like I said, was like mostly the identity thing.

Yeah.

And that's when we were doing this in the neighborhoods, okay.

1826, little village, different places.

And a lot of them didn't have no funding.

We didn't have any funding.

We'd get money from neighborhood stores or the businesses and we'd do it.

With little or no, you know, what you call salary, money.

We did it because we wanted to do it.

They said, well, figure we might make some money later on, you know.

And then what happened was that, like I was saying to him the other day, a lot of the college students, you know.

You know, the art students in school are always looking for something different than what they're being taught, you know.

That's been going on for.

So the art teachers at the Art Institute or whatever, they didn't teach mural art there.

Or any school here in town that I know, you know.

Maybe they do now because of the muralists.

They're here now, but not before.

So anyway, these students would come out to the neighborhood and say they liked it, you know.

And they would, you know, like start working on it.

Take some projects on their own.

And they did a very good job too, you know.

But then these agencies with the money came up, you know.

And they were better qualified to write, you know, proposals and stuff like that.

And they were giving a lot of money.

So I'm not trying to be negative about it, but there's only one place they could paint.

When they got the money, it had to be under a British neighborhood, you know.

So they'd go there and do the murals.

And of course, when we were there, they said, well, it's not like this is our territory or nothing.

But we've been doing this.

We want some of the funds too, you know.

We've been doing this.

It was like getting paid anyway.

So it worked out pretty good, you know.

There was a few groups for them.

One being the Chicago mural group that Weber and I think Bill Walker started.

But I'm not sure, but I know it was him and Walker.

And I was with them for a long time, you know.

Doing the, doing artwork.

But now we're, we got our own group, you know.

It's the Chicago Urban Arts at Casablanca.

And we're doing stuff there, you know.

Also teaching art there, you know.

Drawing, painting, sculpture, whatever comes up, you know.

Have the issues changed now when you go out and paint a mural now? Are you dealing with different issues? Well, the politics or, see, to paint a mural, you can draw from a lot of things that are happening now, you know.

One of the biggest things that happened is the drugs, you know.

And racism is still here like that mural talks about.

A lot of people say, well, like I was telling him too, you know.

They say that the swastika, you know, that's out of place now.

It belongs in the 30s.

And I said, why come, these people still, you go up north and you see all this, you know, racist elements, right? And swastikas and drawing swastikas and talking about white power yet, you know.

So they're still around.

So we used to use the symbols that they were there then and they're still here now, you know.

And as far as drugs, you know, they're still coming in.

Just like, just recently the banks, some of the banks were involved in laundering drug money.

And Bush is talking about giving the Contas more money also, you know.

And they're dealing with drugs.

According to one guy, he says the reason they have to deal in drugs is to fight communism, they say.

Stabilize, what do you call it, Central America.

And numb this here, I guess.

So a lot of the, what do you call it, the subject deal with contemporary politics, you know.

We sometimes don't look too much different than the ones in the past because we've still got the same problems, only worse now.

There's more people involved in it.

Younger people involved in it.

You see people 10 years old selling drugs now, you know.

Or involved in different things like that.

So the message in the mirror would be, you know, that it's up to them actually to get rid of their problem that bothers them, you know.

So how do you decide that, you know, you see a wall? I always imagine you guys like looking at walls and going, what a great wall.

Yeah, I always do that.

All of them do that, you know.

So when you look at a wall, how do you decide what you call, I mean, do you just have this vision? How do you figure out what goes on that wall? Well, see, it depends what's going on in that community, see.

Because what you would paint, for instance, in one community might not fit in the other, see.

For instance, in the 60s when they were doing the identity art, it would fit more in ethnic, Mexican ethnic or Arab ethnic or whatever ethnic it was in that area, see.

And you decide, you meet with people and then you discuss a theme, you know, what the theme's going to be about.

It could be everything from child care to the homeless, you know, depending on what it is.

Like in 1979, maybe I got the year wrong, I don't know, when it was the year of the child, a lot of people were doing murals dealing with children.

And I think John did some on that line, I did too, you know.

And then, for instance, you go to a museum like the Field Museum and we did one dealing with, it was Mother's Day, so it was dealing with the mother, you know.

And since it was a museum, you know, we had people, you know, participating there.

But the theme was appropriate in that area to be done about the mother.

And the other one was about, one before that we did was on past, present and future, you know.

Being in a museum, you know, they got a lot of stuff that belonged back a thousand years.

And they got a lot of stuff that's closer to now.

So we got the idea to do one past, present and future, you know.

Each area you go to calls for a different, in my book, calls for a different theme, you know.

High school might call for one.

You go to a kindergarten, call for another thing.

You go to a college and it might call for something else.

Or you go to a union hall and it deals with workers' history or whatever.

Each place calls for a different story to be told, I guess.

You said that you talk to people.

How does the community actually have input? Do they have input with you in a sense about what's going to go on in that wall? In some cases, yeah.

Like in this case, I usually, I kind of make my own ideas, you know.

And then when the children help, they can come up with ideas too, you know.

But usually I'm the one that's got the main ideas.

In other cases, they might specify, well, we want some to deal with this in particular, you know.

And I might go along with it sometimes, yeah.

Like we did one at El Rincon, you know Rincon? You familiar with it? That area? Western and Milwaukee.

I think Susan's taken us over there.

But it was a methadone clinic.

It's a what? Methadone.

I don't know if it still is.

So when I went there, it's very tense there, you know.

They don't like to be called junkies because they call themselves patients, you know.

And that's what they call them, you know, patients.

They were taking methadone, you know, to counter heroin, whatever.

So of course, what are you going to paint there? I mean, those people are tense.

They're hooked on drugs.

The administration is tense because they don't like them, you know.

They just got those clinics to make money.

The patients don't like them either, you know, so the whole thing is tense.

You go in there, what are you supposed to paint? You can't paint a garden and disregard what's going on there, see.

So there was a couple of people that drew, that liked to draw, you know.

They did pretty good because they had a lot of good tattoos on them, you know, well made, you know, that they had got in prison.

And some of them, you know, had did it themselves, you know.

They showed me, you know, look, I can draw pretty good.

If I can do it with a needle, I can do it with a pencil.

So I said, well, let's, whoever wants to get into discussion, we can get something going.

And these people would sit down and talk, you know, and we would get ideas from there.

He said, we actually don't want to be junkies now.

We don't want to be hooked on drugs, you know, but that's the way it is.

So we can afford to buy heroin or cocaine, a lot of rich completely.

So we come to this clinic and drink methadone.

So we got the idea, you know, to do a mural on anti -drugs, you know.

But not like now they say, just say no, you know, I can just say no, you know, to drugs.

So it was stronger than that.

We would show figures of people.

The dealers would be like bankers.

Like, like, it's not like we were predicting the future or nothing, but we already knew that it's big money that brings drugs into this country.

So the figures dealt with the theme of drug addiction and drug traffic.

And the people there at the clinic, except for a few of them, didn't like it.

But most of them liked it and they said, go ahead and do it, you know.

And it was done in panels and it wasn't like direct on the wall using 8x4 panels.

So we stayed there for about a month and finished it.

And when the people from downtown, the people from Rendezvous came and saw they didn't like it, you know.

They say the thing is completely tasteless, you know.

They say we're expecting something more joyous, you know, in a depressed area like this.

You want something to make people, spirits, you know, get, get, you know, feel happy about it.

But this is depressing, they said.

So the guy said, why is it depressing? We like it, you know.

It shows who's dealing in drugs, who's bringing the drugs into this country, you know.

It shows us that some of the doctors are corrupt.

It shows that some of the bankers are corrupt, you know.

And they say, well, it's just, I don't care what the guy said, one of the directors, he's got to go.

So the director there said, I'll tell you what, let's have a dedication and then we'll decide.

So we had the dedication, you know, a lot of people went, they had a lot of food, you know.

And then they said, but tomorrow this thing has got to go, you know, that's what the guy said, you know.

Because they don't like the politics.

So finally, there was a lot of trouble, you know, people got mad, you know, the patients got mad, the administration got mad.

They had already been mad anyway at each other for different things.

So it brought it to a worse of point, see.

So I was at work that day, you know, and then my wife called me and told me that she was going to, her and another one had to go get the mural because they had stacked it outside on the alley, you know.

So we took it home and that was the end of that one.

And I don't know if it still got a clinic there or not, you know, but like I said, this mural deals with certain, whatever politics in that little area is going on, you know, whatever is happening.

Well, most of the murals, I would say, 90 % of them were left alone, you know.

But if you see some of them destroyed once in a while, people who do graffiti, maybe it's a street gang, doesn't like that particular gang in that area.

And they figure that they worked on it, somebody worked on it, the worst thing you can do to a neighborhood is mess up a wall like that, you know.

Like when we started this one here, the one we have here, somebody did some graffiti on it.

So some gang slogan or something.

So then somebody talked to that man and told him that it was a community project, you know.

Well, it was an 18 -year -old, something like that.

And that if he wants to participate, he can participate in a better way, you know.

And we painted over the slogan and he just left it alone, you know, he didn't bother it.

The one on this side, the one called Shoot for the Sky, somebody threw an egg on it one time, you know.

We just getting finished with it, yeah.

And they threw one up there too, you know.

But anyway, the reason this guy did it two years ago, because we won't let him work on the mural, so he got...

We told him we had enough people helping, you know, so he came up there and laid some eggs on it.

But I mean, if you, you know, if you have paintings in a museum that's protected for maybe, you know, thousands of years, is this art going to last? No, I think it's going to last, you know.

I think as the years go by, people begin to respect it more, because you can go to some of the murals.

I paint like one on the Spalding and North.

There's a lot of graffiti around it, but not on it.

Maybe nowadays, you know, but I haven't seen it in a couple of months, you know.

But they used to leave it alone, you know.

Especially if you get the community involved in it.

Do you have a feeling about why it is that it's, I don't know, what you might use the word, Hispanic or Chicano or whatever, but why it is these neighborhoods where you see all this art on the walls and not Chinese and not Polish? Well, there are some in the Polish neighborhoods, like I think Milwaukee and Pulaski is one, dealing with the Polish culture.

I don't know if you've seen it, close to McDonald's, yeah.

And then there's one on 47, close to Market Park.

Not as many, but there are some, you know.

See, like now, what's happening is a lot of the people that have money, they're buying stuff to be put inside, you know, to be done inside their houses, you know.

Mosaic, you know, relief.

They used to say it one time it belongs in the slums, now they say it belongs to people who can afford it.

And they hire people to do that, you know, a lot of people do that kind of work.

Well, I mean, I saw that guy was discussing the other day, they said the same people who came out of the college at that time, you know, and worked in the neighborhoods, then later on got the idea, you know, they had more business savvy, I guess.

And then they opened up their own shops and the ones dealing with people downtown now.

Like this store that opened up Bloomingdale's and whatever you call it, there's people doing work in there, you know, and getting paid a lot of money.

I ain't got nothing against them, they can do it.

It's alright with me.

But that's not what you'd want to be doing? I wouldn't mind.

But I'd still be doing community art because I feel more comfortable here, you see.

It's like this guy is doing this and this and that, my son's participating, my daughter's working with him.

You know, it's, I don't know how to just say it, you know.

It seems like they appreciate it more, I don't know if that's the case or not.

It might be.

I'm just getting back to the whole, it seems to me as an outsider that there's something about this kind of art that's really, I mean maybe there's some in Polish neighborhoods every now and then you see one on, you know, Michigan Avenue or something, but it seems like it's more a part of your culture.

Well, see, to begin with, like in Mexico, you're going to the pyramids and there's a lot of murals there.

So I might be mistaken, I'm not too familiar with that part of history, but there were, you know, like the Aztecs and local people that were doing mural art in the temples.

And I would take a guess at it and say that it is, it has been like Latin's who introduced mural art because Michelangelo was doing mural art, but it was different.

See, he just took the space and put a figure there.

He took the space and put whatever space he had, he put a figure there.

Well done, of course.

But then when Rivera and them came along, they used the space in a different manner.

They're the ones that introduced, that actually introduced the murals to the world, I would say, and using the technique that they used like Fresco and Cicero using the geometric lines, like I try to use sometimes, you know, and this other man named Hector uses.

He's the one that, this guy Hector, he's the one that's been here a couple of years and sort of refreshing our minds on how to use that, you know.

So I would say it does have Mexican roots, I would say, you know, the mural, the modern mural movement.

Yeah.

Going back to the people that were doing it like Cicero, Zolosco and Rivera and the rest of them that do murals, it does come from Mexican roots, I would say, you know.

So of course, when we do it, I'm not thinking about that, you know, I'm trying to just do it so it comes out looking alright.

I don't care what roots it has, you know.

Well, I don't want to wear you out.

Can I ask you a few more questions or? Sure.

Oh, one thing that's curious about it, someone like me walks up to these murals.

Are there ways that I could look at them to try to understand them? Are there certain symbols that are going to be recurring? You do see certain things in a lot of different murals.

Are there things that you would tell me to look for or that you could explain to me that I might understand better? Well, I'm very basic about that because you will look at colors and you see bright colors, you know, it looks good.

If it looks dark, you know, it's indicating something maybe negative.

Like in this case, I learned to use symbols, you know, instead of putting a lot of figures, maybe use two or three and that's it and then colors and then maybe like it has a dark sky, cloudy sky, indicating whatever negative things are going on now in politics or whatever.

And drugs and crime and instead of putting a lot of figures there indicating certain things, the storm behind it deals with all that.

And then of course Thunderbird Dove indicates something stopping it.

You know, it's not in full gear because there's people stopping certain things, you know.

And the dove is not actually, it's not that white, you know, it doesn't look real white.

So it means it's like in there doing something like working.

And then under the wings of the dove you see different colors, brighter colors, you know.

So it's not too difficult to understand.

And then the two sides of the doorway show a boy and a girl in different atmospheres, you know.

So it's not too hard to read.

Though some people might do things like that, you know, put a lot of different things so that people look at it and keep coming back and trying to figure out what it says.

And that's okay too, you know.

But the way I do it, I figured I want to do it so that people can grasp it, you know.

So that people don't go to museums often and they can see certain art forms that they can speak about, you know.

Then I have to be saying, oh, this line curves to the left and it means this, you know.

And such grace and all that that they talk about in the museums.

I don't even know what they're talking about.

All I see is a color and whatever the thing says there, you know.

Do you get, I mean, obviously you were telling us this story about where they piled up your mural and made you take it away, but do you get feedback, a lot of feedback from the community? Do you paint a mural? How do you know how people are responding to it? The people usually like it, you know.

Because you can see anybody on the street, even when I'm away from this area, say, hey, here's a guy that painted that mural up there.

He's the mural man or the artist or whatever, you know.

And see, a lot of the people don't like to be called artists, including me, you know, because it's better that we're known as culture workers or something like that, you know, other than artists.

Because you think of artists as, I think as an artist when I think of Michelangelo or somebody like that, you know.

But I ain't no Michelangelo, just like this guy told this other guy he was no candidate.

So more of a culture worker, you know.

So you don't think of yourself as an artist? Not really, you know.

I never thought myself an artist.

No.

I just do that, you know.

I consider it more like work.

The work I enjoy doing, see, I enjoy doing.

What sort of things, I mean, from what you, what you see your community going and the needs of the people on here, what do you see are the topics that you're going to be doing in the future? Do you have sort of a vision of where the murals are going to go? Yeah.

Well, see, like we always have different ideas, you know, like this other wall that I'm going to do next year.

We want to do some sculpture on it.

Now we get enough money, see, because like I said, most of my murals are sponsored by the Chicago Office of Fine Arts.

So we get a certain amount of money.

And we're going to see if we can get maybe more money from other sources so we can do a three -dimensional cement relief, you know, and use different stuff that we see laying around like glass, sand, and different things that can be put into the mural.

That's what I see.

So you see them moving toward this 3D? In my case, yeah, that's what I want to do, yeah.

It's supposed to just paint it, which is all right, nothing wrong with that.

But we can get more money, we can, you know, do other stuff.

And I hear they're cutting a lot of that, they might cut the funds for the arts, you know.

So then, like a friend of mine was saying, if we get used to being given money by these organizations, and now we're going to have to go on our own, see if we got how to get a portfolio organized, get more publicity, and do what the guys downtown are doing, open up, you know, sell your own self, get the money your own way, you know.

It's not too much depend on the agencies, you know.

Which in my case, if it wasn't for the agency, Chicago's Fine Arts, I wouldn't have enough money to do a mural, you know.

Because it cost about $5 ,000 to do.

I mean the total of a mural.

Let's not count scaffolding and all that.

Because, you know, people from the boys club pay for the scaffold, you know.

Are there certain themes and things that you think are going to change, issues? Oh yeah, the...

Yeah, they're changing.

Because for instance, if you go to an Arab community, there's things happening in their part of the world.

And then the Latino community, this part happened in Central America, that might change, you know, that might get for the better.

Or you see a lot of Irish people in their neighborhoods who are up on the politics of what's happening in their part of the world.

So you would do a mural there, of course you discuss with them and say, well do this, do that.

Ireland is not like it was before, but this is what it is now, you know.

Or whatever country the man comes from or the woman.

Mm -hmm.

This takes just a minute.

Pretty well talked your ear off.

I don't know, did you want to ask a question or two?

Date Of Production

October 15 1988

Abstract

José Guerrero discusses how he got started painting and his experiences as a muralist.

Identifier

A.2021-10-0065

Log

00:00.000 --> 00:07.000
We came up with it that we wanted to ask you, and if there's other things that you think we should be asking

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about the murals or what you do, please feel free just to redirect us.

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Just for starters, we wanted to know a little bit about your background, where you came

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from and how you got up here.

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Like I said, originally I'm from San Antonio, Texas, you know.

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And how I got here, me and this other guy used to drift around the country,

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you know, because it's the only way we could get around, you know.

00:37.000 --> 00:42.920
So we used to come to Missouri, the whole Midwest, you know.

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Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.

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And one time it just happened that I came and started working here,

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and I just stayed around 64. I just stayed here up to now, over 20 years.

01:01.640 --> 01:07.760
What kind of work were you doing? At that time, we were just doing seasonal

01:07.760 --> 01:18.080
work. We worked during the summer and then go back. When I came in 64 and got a job,

01:18.080 --> 01:22.240
I started working, then started getting a regular check. So I started, one year led

01:22.240 --> 01:28.360
to another, you know, in this state here, all this long. And that's when I enrolled

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in the art schools, you know, like going to the Art Institute and American Academy of

01:34.080 --> 01:40.440
Art, they call it. We used to take, or I used to take what they call the non-credit courses

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here, take figure drawing, and a little painting, not too much.

01:47.240 --> 01:54.680
Did it tie in at all to the kind of work you were doing? Or were you working in art at

01:54.680 --> 01:55.680
all at that time?

01:55.680 --> 01:59.800
Well, not really. I wasn't doing any work, art work, like professional art work. I was

01:59.800 --> 02:05.560
doing art work, but not making any money out of it, nothing. Just for my own benefit, I

02:05.560 --> 02:11.960
were just painting and drawing. And I had met this guy that just got out of the, live

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in West Kansas, in a penitentiary. And this guy could paint, you know. He was a good artist.

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And he said, you should take up painting instead of just drawing, you know, you should paint.

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I said, well, I can't do that. You know, he showed me the stuff he did while he was in

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prison, you know. He said, if I can do it, you can do it, you know. And I said, well,

02:32.600 --> 02:38.080
maybe I can." So I bought some paints and started messing around with them. Because

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everything was black and white. I used to do everything in black and white. I didn't

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have enough confidence to use color. I said, well, I can't do it. I'm still not that

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good at it, but I do it anyway. Yeah.

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that was really before the mural movement? Rufio Well, the murals, I think, started in

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the early 70s, I would say. Bill Walker and John Webber and a lot of people were doing

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murals. And the Mexicans over there on 18th Street, they started doing some stuff. And

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I happened that I met John, you know, at one of the, we were in a conference someplace

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in Gary, Indiana, you know, miners' conference or something like that. And he happened to

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be there, and he just happened to be starting on the U.E. Hall, you know, was going to,

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you know. So he asked me if I could help him, and I said, yeah. Even though I couldn't,

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I know much about painting, like I said, I said, I can do that, you know. Once I got

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up there. I said, what the hell are you doing? The guy would say, where'd you learn to paint?

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I said, well, I don't know how to paint that well, but if I see what you're doing, maybe

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I can. And it came out pretty good anyway. Worked out pretty good. Because I had a knack

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for it anyway, since I started painting about a year before that.

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that I can recall, yeah. At the same time, I was doing another one on 18th Street with

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some kids. I don't know. Called Si Se Pueda, have you seen it?

04:28.720 --> 04:38.440
And then, we started another one in Amherst. John was doing about two or three of them

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college. I went up there, and we used to, I helped them out on a couple of them. There

04:50.600 --> 04:55.560
was about three at the same time we were doing. We left the one at UE for the time being so

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we could paint outside, and also do the one at Amherst.

04:58.560 --> 05:06.920
Can we back up a little bit? It seems that political things or union things or some kind

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of, those kind of violence were what got you into this in the first place. Can you talk

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about that a little bit? That would be, in my case, yeah, I guess it

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was that, because like I was doing, like I was telling Susan one time, I was doing some

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cartooning for newspapers, for like workers' papers. And we had a paper at work. We used

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to mimeograph, called People Get Ready, named after the song, People Get Ready. And some

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of the guys used to do all the writing, and I used to do the cartoons for them. We just

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give it away, we couldn't sell it. We'd give it away. Sometimes we couldn't give it away

05:49.480 --> 05:56.840
either. Because it was a, speaking against a company, people would say, no, I don't want

05:56.840 --> 06:03.640
that kind of material because I might lose my job or whatever. We were trying to get

06:03.640 --> 06:10.520
the UE back, the United Electrical Workers, back. Because during the 50s and 60s, they

06:10.520 --> 06:18.360
had been thrown out of there because of the Senator from Wisconsin, what's his name?

06:18.360 --> 06:25.720
McCarthy or something like that. Yeah. And they had been thrown out and the IAM had went

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in, you know. So, at the time it was an open shop, you know, you could join, you know,

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join it. So, me and these other people got together, we're trying to make it a clothes

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shop, you know. And at the same time, trying to get the UE back. We figured that the union

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was still good at that time, you know. They're not now, you know, but they were there, you

06:51.200 --> 06:56.480
know. And I figured, you know, just help them out, and trying to organize the people in

06:56.480 --> 07:05.680
And we got enough people to vote, but not enough. So that was it for that. They got

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elected again, the ones that were there before the IAM, International Machinists or whatever.

07:13.800 --> 07:19.760
And then in 1982, they closed the plant. So that was the end of that.

07:19.760 --> 07:24.760
that kind of got you into…?

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Well, it wasn't actually the cause, because I was already doing work, but the work that

07:30.280 --> 07:37.280
I was doing had a lot to do with politics. Because like I was saying, in all art, it's

07:37.280 --> 07:42.360
politics anyway. I don't think there's anything that's painted that doesn't,

07:42.360 --> 07:47.760
it's not directed at some mentality, or some outlook, or some class of people. That's

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That's what I think.

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Like when Rivera painted the murals in Mexico, he was telling the story of the Mexican Revolution,

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see?

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Because the people, most of the people couldn't read or write, you know?

08:03.920 --> 08:09.520
So visually they could see, they had never seen a lot of the big shots, you know?

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But they saw Huerta, they saw Porfirio Diaz, they saw different characters in the revolution

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that they had never met before. And it was politics. And it still is, like whatever they

08:25.920 --> 08:32.080
paint is political. Whether it be like, you go to the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico,

08:32.080 --> 08:40.520
there's a lot of ropes and bricks put together. And it's political because the guy that did

08:40.520 --> 08:46.120
it to him must have some kind of politics. And he must have been directing that thought

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to somebody that he thought might receive it.

08:50.720 --> 08:52.960
A worker looked at it, and he didn't know what it is.

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He said, what the hell is that?

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Doesn't make sense.

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Because I've seen people talking about art in Mexico.

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But they see something that makes sense to them, like a

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woman running a machine, or somebody doing the work of an

09:12.120 --> 09:14.320
architect laying bricks.

09:14.320 --> 09:23.440
they can relate to that. That's what I'm saying, that all art is not detached from

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politics, like an old Chinese friend of mine used to say.

09:27.440 --> 09:33.440
What did he say? He would say that?

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Yeah. Mao Zedong used to say that there is no art for art's sake, that all art is political.

09:43.240 --> 09:50.240
It's a long quote, but I can't remember it all. All I know is that it said that it's

09:50.240 --> 09:52.800
political. Everything's political in art.

09:52.800 --> 10:02.520
What happened here? You were here right around the time then when things were taking off.

10:02.520 --> 10:04.440
What got things started here, with murals?

10:04.440 --> 10:09.840
Well, not only here, but in L.A. Like I said, this is my opinion. Somebody else might say

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But people were trying to identify themselves. Like the Mexicans in L.A. and living in the

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U.S. would say, well, we're not Mexicans, but we're not Anglo-Saxon either. They say

10:27.640 --> 10:35.640
we're Chicanos. It's the correct word. Because now they call us Hispanics. When I was in

10:35.640 --> 10:41.480
San Antonio, they used to say, You're Latin Americans. And before that, they used to say,

10:41.480 --> 10:49.120
You're Spanish Americans. Or you're this or you're that. And the most advanced of the

10:49.120 --> 10:52.960
working class, even though they know that much about history, they say, Well, these

10:52.960 --> 10:57.240
people, they call themselves different kinds of names. How would you like it if somebody

10:57.240 --> 11:05.360
said you were British and you're not? So they say, Well, they call themselves Chicanos.

11:05.360 --> 11:09.000
up to the, even now, of course, I can remember.

11:09.000 --> 11:11.240
And that makes an identity, saying,

11:11.240 --> 11:13.480
well, we're not from Mexico.

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We ain't got nothing against Mexico.

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And we're not Anglo-Saxons.

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We're Chicano, you know, with Mexican roots or whatever,

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you know.

11:24.640 --> 11:28.480
And the murals were for the purpose of saying,

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this is what we are.

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And this is what we believe in.

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They showed paintings of Ray Tijerina of New Mexico.

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They showed paintings of Cesar Chavez.

11:38.560 --> 11:41.400
And then the more political, we took pictures of Che Guevara,

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as you can see on the 18th Street.

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You know, saying that Latinos also have a history.

11:50.800 --> 11:53.560
And they also support their heroes,

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whether some other people like them or not.

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Because me being from San Antonio,

12:00.200 --> 12:06.060
The people that they say were our heroes were like the people who conquered Texas, like

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David Crockett and Sam Houston or whatever.

12:11.700 --> 12:17.380
And even as immigrants, we said, these people are not our heroes.

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Why do we have to look up to these people?

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They have this statue of David Crockett.

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You go into the Alamo even now, you see John Wayne.

12:27.460 --> 12:33.020
And then they got this white marble thing outside. They said, this is a monument to

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our forefathers. They said, well, not mine. On the contrary, it's a monument to white

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supremacy. Side look at it. Colonialism.

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that. And people would, including myself, would try to save what we believe in the murals.

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And they were pretty strong, what we said, because a lot of them were destroyed by the

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right-wing people. They put swastikas or throw paint on them, or they were well done.

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Like the one on Western and 18th Street, I don't know if you've seen it.

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It's like a film of a cameraman rolling.

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And it's got a lot of sections, you know, like those brackets.

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And it's got different, it's against intervention in Central America.

13:36.940 --> 13:41.180
So really, you know, all of them are political, like I said.

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I haven't seen one that's not, you know.

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Even if it's just a line on the wall, they're saying something.

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Or just like different colors.

13:50.100 --> 13:52.780
You know?

13:52.780 --> 13:54.540
So who are they speaking to?

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Who are you talking to?

13:57.580 --> 14:00.700
Well, a lot of times, in my case,

14:00.700 --> 14:04.220
it's directed at the younger people, you know?

14:04.220 --> 14:11.540
Because they being the most daring and the most whatever,

14:11.540 --> 14:12.060
you know?

14:12.060 --> 14:13.540
They have more spunk.

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And they can grasp certain things, you know, whether it be negative or positive.

14:19.180 --> 14:23.340
And the thing is to tell them that there is a different way of thinking besides what they

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see on TV, you know, or what they see the, especially like a lot of police, cop shows,

14:31.860 --> 14:34.640
you know, they have a lot of cop shows.

14:34.640 --> 14:39.020
And they see that as being part of the American way, you know.

14:39.020 --> 14:48.100
they see John Wayne, they see Karate Moose or whatever. And then when they see these

14:48.100 --> 14:53.740
murals depicting culture that really belongs to them, they say, well, maybe I can relate

14:53.740 --> 15:00.780
to that too. Because a lot of these kids, some of them don't even speak Spanish. And

15:00.780 --> 15:07.700
it's on account that they think that to speak English is better than to speak Spanish, that

15:07.700 --> 15:10.780
they're accepted more.

15:10.780 --> 15:14.460
And with the murals like this one that we're doing,

15:15.300 --> 15:18.780
it shows two young people taking over

15:18.780 --> 15:21.980
certain aspects of history.

15:21.980 --> 15:26.980
And it says that it's up to them and the people now,

15:27.260 --> 15:30.140
but mostly up to them to get things straight,

15:30.140 --> 15:31.580
whatever needs to be straight,

15:32.740 --> 15:37.540
to change politics or to get rid of a system

15:37.540 --> 15:44.340
that's bad. And it shows that they can get involved, and it shows that the mural itself

15:44.340 --> 15:48.100
shows that they can do artwork, too, because there's about ten kids working on it. And

15:48.100 --> 15:55.220
a lot of people figure that maybe they can do it, but with good direction, they can do

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it. I say anybody can paint. If I can paint, anybody can paint.

16:00.660 --> 16:19.700
What do you hope to achieve by having the kids work with you?

16:19.700 --> 16:26.620
Well, it's not like if we do something like that they'll forever be enlightened about

16:26.620 --> 16:32.180
certain things. But I can always walk into this community and see a lot of kids and they

16:32.180 --> 16:37.940
say, well I worked in that mural, I did this and I did that, you know. As opposed to, you

16:37.940 --> 16:41.140
can hear in this neighborhood, some guy got shot right in the corner, you know, because

16:41.140 --> 16:48.140
he was wearing his cap lopsided or wearing the wrong color jacket, you know. See, you

16:49.140 --> 16:54.300
know what I mean? It's the other side of the coin, that not everything is negative.

16:54.300 --> 16:58.660
like Tristan was saying, you walk down this neighborhood, everybody looks friendly. It's

16:58.660 --> 17:05.260
not that people are hostile, but something is causing those gangs to act that way. And

17:05.260 --> 17:11.020
part of the thing that's doing it is the drugs, because you make a lot of money selling drugs.

17:11.020 --> 17:16.260
It's better than working at McDonald's. If a guy's getting $3 an hour there, whatever,

17:16.260 --> 17:21.020
and he can sell drugs and make 50 bucks a day or more, it's cool. He's liable to do

17:21.020 --> 17:30.580
do that. If his parents or whatever, counselors, haven't put something different in his head.

17:30.580 --> 17:38.580
And I figure that the art, as far as the community murals, are doing that. Giving them a more

17:38.580 --> 17:43.580
positive way of exercising their energies.

17:43.580 --> 17:53.560
the main themes that you guys were painting? What were the main issues?

17:53.560 --> 18:01.840
Rufio- Sixties and seventies, like I said, was like mostly the identity thing. That's

18:01.840 --> 18:14.040
when we were doing this in the neighborhoods, okay? 18, 26, little village, different places.

18:14.040 --> 18:20.640
And a lot of them didn't have no funding. We didn't have any funding. We get money from

18:20.640 --> 18:27.280
neighborhood stores or the businesses, and we do it. With little or no, you know, what

18:27.280 --> 18:33.320
which is called salary, money. We did it because we wanted to do it. They said, we'll figure

18:33.320 --> 18:42.120
we might make some money later on. And then what happened was that, like I was saying

18:42.120 --> 18:47.600
to him the other day, a lot of the college students, the art students in school are always

18:47.600 --> 18:51.400
looking for something different than what they're being taught. That's been going on

18:51.400 --> 18:59.160
for. So the art teachers at the Art Institute or whatever, they didn't teach mural art

18:59.160 --> 19:07.280
there or any school here in town that I know. Maybe they do now because of the muralists.

19:07.280 --> 19:13.920
They're here now, but not before. So anyway, these students would come out to the neighborhood

19:13.920 --> 19:21.360
I said, they liked it, you know. And they would, you know, like, start working on it,

19:21.360 --> 19:28.880
take some projects on their own. And they did a very good job, too, you know. But then

19:28.880 --> 19:34.480
these agencies with the money came up, you know. And they were better qualified to write,

19:34.480 --> 19:41.600
you know, proposals and stuff like that. And they were giving a lot of money. So, I'm not

19:41.600 --> 19:46.500
trying to be negative about it, but there's only one place they could paint when they

19:46.500 --> 19:53.480
got the money. It had to be an underprivileged neighborhood. So they'd go there and do the

19:53.480 --> 19:59.160
murals. Of course, when we were there, they said, well, it's not like this is our territory

19:59.160 --> 20:04.040
or not, but we've been doing this. We want some of the funds too. We've been doing this,

20:04.040 --> 20:11.560
we'll start getting paid anyway. So it worked out pretty good. There was a few groups formed.

20:11.560 --> 20:18.560
I want to be in the Chicago Mural Group that Weber and I think Bill Walker started.

20:18.560 --> 20:24.000
But I'm not sure, but I know it's him and Walker.

20:24.000 --> 20:31.340
And I was with him for a long time, you know, doing the, doing artwork.

20:31.340 --> 20:35.480
But now we're, we got our own group, you know.

20:35.480 --> 20:39.520
It's Chicago Urban Arts at Casa Atlanta.

20:39.520 --> 20:41.360
And we're doing stuff there.

20:41.360 --> 20:50.640
teaching art, drawing, painting, and sculpturing, whatever comes up.

20:50.640 --> 20:58.480
Have the issues changed now, when you go out and paint a mural now, are you dealing with

20:58.480 --> 20:59.480
different issues?

20:59.480 --> 21:04.640
Well, the politics. See, to paint a mural, you can draw from a lot of things that are

21:04.640 --> 21:11.680
happening now, you know. One of the biggest things happening is the drugs, you know, so.

21:11.680 --> 21:15.280
And racism is still here, like that mural talks about. A lot of people say, well, like

21:15.280 --> 21:19.360
I was telling him too, you know. They say that the swastika and all that sort of place

21:19.360 --> 21:24.880
now belongs in the 30s. And I says, why come, these people still, you go up north and you

21:24.880 --> 21:32.920
see all this, you know, racist elements writing swastikas and drawing swastikas and talking

21:32.920 --> 21:41.500
about white power yet. So they're still around. So we still use the symbols that they were

21:41.500 --> 21:50.360
there then and they're still here now. And as far as drugs, they're still coming in.

21:50.360 --> 22:00.400
Just recently, the banks, some of the banks were involved in laundering drug money. And

22:00.400 --> 22:09.000
is talking about giving the Contras more money also. And they're dealing in drugs. According

22:09.000 --> 22:15.400
to one guy, he says, the reason they have to deal in drugs is to fight communism, they

22:15.400 --> 22:27.440
say. Stabilize what do you call it? Central America. And numb this year, I guess. So a

22:27.440 --> 22:38.760
A lot of the, what do you call it, the subjects deal with contemporary politics. We sometimes

22:38.760 --> 22:42.640
don't look too much different than the ones in the past because we've still got the same

22:42.640 --> 22:51.040
problems, only worse now. There's more people involved in it, younger people involved in

22:51.040 --> 22:58.320
You see people ten years old selling drugs now, or involved in different things like

22:58.320 --> 23:06.200
that. So the message in the mural would be that it's up to them actually to get rid

23:06.200 --> 23:07.840
of their problem that bothers them.

23:07.840 --> 23:14.840
I always imagine you guys looking at walls and going, what a great wall.

23:14.840 --> 23:15.840
Yeah.

23:15.840 --> 23:16.840
I always do that.

23:16.840 --> 23:17.840
All of them do that.

23:17.840 --> 23:18.840
When you look at a wall, how do you decide what you got?

23:18.840 --> 23:19.840
Do you just have this vision?

23:19.840 --> 23:30.840
How do you figure out what goes on that wall?

23:30.840 --> 23:34.320
It depends what's going on in that community.

23:34.320 --> 23:39.000
But you would paint, for instance, in one community and might not fit in the other,

23:39.000 --> 23:47.280
see? For instance, in the 60s when they were doing the identity art, it would fit more

23:47.280 --> 23:57.600
in an ethnic, Mexican ethnic or Arab ethnic or whatever ethnic it was in that area, see?

23:57.600 --> 24:05.120
You decide, you meet with people, and then you discuss a theme, you know, what the theme's

24:05.120 --> 24:07.440
gonna be about.

24:07.440 --> 24:15.440
It could be everything from child care to the homeless, you know, depending on what

24:15.440 --> 24:16.440
it is.

24:16.440 --> 24:20.280
Like in 1979, maybe I got the year wrong, I don't know, when it was the Year of the

24:20.280 --> 24:26.680
Child, a lot of people were doing murals, dealing with children.

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And I think John did some on that line.

24:30.880 --> 24:33.560
I did too.

24:33.560 --> 24:40.840
And then, for instance, you go to a museum like the Field Museum.

24:40.840 --> 24:47.560
And we did one dealing with, it was Mother's Day.

24:47.560 --> 24:52.400
So it was dealing with the mother.

24:52.400 --> 24:59.460
Since it was a museum, we had people participate in that.

24:59.460 --> 25:07.480
But the theme was appropriate in that area to be done about the mother.

25:07.480 --> 25:16.340
And the other one was about, one before that we did was on past, present, and future.

25:16.340 --> 25:21.680
Being in a museum, they got a lot of stuff that belonged back a thousand years.

25:21.680 --> 25:24.700
And they got a lot of stuff that's closer to now.

25:24.700 --> 25:31.060
So we got the idea to do one past, present, and future.

25:31.060 --> 25:36.800
Each area you go to calls for a different, in my book, calls for a different theme.

25:36.800 --> 25:38.640
High school might call for one.

25:38.640 --> 25:41.760
You go to kindergarten, call for another thing.

25:41.760 --> 25:46.240
You go to a college, you might call for something else.

25:46.240 --> 25:55.920
or you go to a union hall, and it deals with workers' history or whatever. Each place calls

25:55.920 --> 26:04.440
for a different story to be told, I guess. You said that you talk to people, how does

26:04.440 --> 26:08.880
the community actually have input? Do they have input with you, in a sense, about what's

26:08.880 --> 26:17.200
going to go on that wall? In some cases, yeah. Like in this case, I

26:17.200 --> 26:25.440
usually kind of make my own ideas. And then when the children help, they can come up with

26:25.440 --> 26:32.800
ideas too. But usually I'm the one that's got the main ideas. In other cases, they might

26:32.800 --> 26:39.480
specify what we want. Some to deal with this in particular, you know. I might go along

26:39.480 --> 26:48.920
with it sometimes. Yeah. Like we did one at El Rincón. You know Rincón? You familiar

26:48.920 --> 26:59.840
with? That area? Western and Milwaukee. I think Susan's taken us over there. But it

26:59.840 --> 27:09.680
was a methadone clinic. I don't know if it still is. So when I went there, it's very

27:09.680 --> 27:15.040
tense there. There was a lot of, they don't like to be called junkies, they call themselves

27:15.040 --> 27:21.800
patients. And that's what they call them, patients. They were taking methadone to counter

27:21.800 --> 27:32.700
or heroin, whatever. So of course, why are you going to paint there? I mean, those people

27:32.700 --> 27:39.440
are tense. They're hooked on drugs. The administration is tense, because they don't like them. They

27:39.440 --> 27:45.240
just got those clinics to make money. The patients don't like them either, so the whole

27:45.240 --> 27:49.800
thing is tense. You go in there, what are you supposed to paint? You can't paint a garden

27:49.800 --> 27:54.560
and disregard what's going on there, see?

27:54.560 --> 28:01.160
So there was a couple of people that drew, that liked to draw.

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They did pretty good because they had a lot of good tattoos on them, well made, that they

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had got in prison.

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And some of them had did it themselves.

28:11.920 --> 28:13.520
They showed me, look, I can draw pretty good.

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If I can do it with a needle, I can do it with a pencil.

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So I said, well, let's whoever wants to get in the discussion, we can get something going.

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And these people would sit down and talk, you know, and we would get ideas from there.

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He said, we actually don't want to be junkies now.

28:35.320 --> 28:40.840
We don't want to be hooked on drugs, you know, but that's the way it is.

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So we can't afford to buy heroin or cocaine, Sutter Ridge, completely.

28:47.280 --> 28:59.680
we come to this clinic and drink methadone. So we got the idea to do a mural on anti-drugs.

28:59.680 --> 29:10.080
But not like now they say, just say no. How can you just say no to drugs? So it was stronger

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than that, we would show figures of people, the dealers would be like bankers, like, like,

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it's not like we were predicting the future or nothing, but we already knew that it's

29:22.080 --> 29:30.680
big money that brings drugs into this country. So the figures dealt with the theme of drug

29:30.680 --> 29:38.400
addiction and drug traffic. And, and the people there at the clinic, except for a few of them,

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like it. But most of them liked it and they said, go ahead and do it, you know. And it

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was done in panels and it wasn't like direct on the wall. It was in 8 by 4 panels. So,

29:52.560 --> 30:00.080
stayed there for about a month and finished it. And when the people from downtown, the

30:00.080 --> 30:05.760
people who ran the thing came, they saw they didn't like it, you know. They said, the thing

30:05.760 --> 30:10.560
Everything is completely tasteless, you know.

30:10.560 --> 30:12.720
It's a weird spectrum.

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Something more joyous, you know, in a depressed area like this, you want something to make

30:20.080 --> 30:28.640
people spirits, you know, get, you know, feel happy about it.

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But this is depression, they said.

30:30.940 --> 30:32.360
So the guy said, why is it depression?

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We like it, you know.

30:34.120 --> 30:41.040
He chose who's dealing in drugs, who's bringing the drugs into this country.

30:41.040 --> 30:44.940
He chose that some of the doctors are corrupt.

30:44.940 --> 30:49.320
He chose that some of the bankers are corrupt.

30:49.320 --> 30:55.600
They say, well, he says, I don't care what, the guy said, one of the directors.

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It's got to go.

30:58.160 --> 31:07.320
So the director there said, I'll tell you what, let's have a dedication, and then we'll

31:07.320 --> 31:14.760
decide. So we had the dedication. A lot of people went. They had a lot of food. And then

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they said, but tomorrow this thing has got to go. And that's what the guy said, because

31:19.120 --> 31:22.320
they don't like the politics.

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So finally, there was a lot of trouble. People got mad. The patients got mad. The administration

31:29.240 --> 31:33.720
got mad. They had already been mad anyway at each other for different things. So it

31:33.720 --> 31:45.080
brought it to a worse point. So I was at work that day, and then my wife called me and told

31:45.080 --> 31:48.560
me that she was going to, her and another woman had to go get their meal, because they

31:48.560 --> 32:01.280
get stacked outside in the alley. So we took it home. And that was the end of that one.

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And I don't know if they still got a clinic there or not. But like I said, it's murals

32:06.680 --> 32:12.680
deal with certain, whatever politics in that little area is going on, whatever's happening.

32:12.680 --> 32:19.680
that's what's happening. How do you feel about the fact that, I mean, doing this artwork

32:19.680 --> 32:26.680
and that it's in the elements and people can get paint on it, I mean, that kind of

32:26.680 --> 32:33.600
transitory? Well, most of the murals, I would say, 90% of them were left alone. If you see

32:33.600 --> 32:45.640
some of them destroyed once in a while. People who do graffiti. Maybe it's a street gang

32:45.640 --> 32:52.840
that doesn't like that particular gang in that area. And they figure that they worked

32:52.840 --> 32:56.560
on it, somebody worked on it. The worst thing you can do to a neighborhood is mess up a

32:56.560 --> 33:02.560
a wall like that, you know. Like when we started this one here, the one we have here, somebody

33:02.560 --> 33:15.920
did some graffiti on it. So some gang slogan or something. So then somebody talked to that

33:15.920 --> 33:21.920
man and told him that it was a community project, you know. Well, it was an 18-year-old, something

33:21.920 --> 33:30.240
And that if he wants to participate, he can participate in a better way, you know.

33:30.240 --> 33:36.160
And we painted over the slogan and he just left it alone and he didn't bother.

33:36.160 --> 33:39.880
The one on this side, the one called Shoot for the Sky, somebody threw an acorn at one

33:39.880 --> 33:42.400
time, you know.

33:42.400 --> 33:45.640
We just getting finished with it.

33:45.640 --> 33:47.480
And they threw one up there too, you know.

33:47.480 --> 33:53.920
Anyway, the reason this guy did it two years ago, because we won't let him work on the

33:53.920 --> 33:54.920
murals.

33:54.920 --> 34:00.920
We told him we had enough people helping, so he came up and laid some eggs on them.

34:00.920 --> 34:13.000
If you paint these in a museum, it's protected for maybe thousands of years.

34:13.000 --> 34:15.360
Is this art going to last?

34:15.360 --> 34:17.400
I think it's going to last.

34:17.400 --> 34:24.040
as the years go by, people begin to respect them more, because you can go to some of the

34:24.040 --> 34:28.300
murals I paint, like mine on Spalding and North, there's a lot of graffiti around it,

34:28.300 --> 34:33.640
but not on it. Maybe nowadays, but I haven't seen it in a couple of months. But they used

34:33.640 --> 34:38.040
to leave it alone. Especially if you get the community involved in it.

34:38.040 --> 34:45.040
Do you have a feeling about why it is that it's, I don't know, you might use the word

34:45.040 --> 34:51.200
Hispanic or Chicano or whatever, but why it is these neighborhoods where you see all this

34:51.200 --> 34:55.800
art on the walls, and not Chinese and not Polish?

34:55.800 --> 34:59.400
Well, there are some in the Polish neighborhoods.

34:59.400 --> 35:05.880
Like I think Milwaukee and Pulaski is one, dealing with the Polish culture.

35:05.880 --> 35:10.320
I don't know if you've seen it close to McDonald's, yeah?

35:10.320 --> 35:17.480
And then there's one on 47, close to Marquette Park.

35:17.480 --> 35:21.200
Not as many, but there are some, you know?

35:21.200 --> 35:26.440
See like now, what's happening is a lot of the people that have money, they're buying

35:26.440 --> 35:33.440
stuff to be put inside, you know, murals to be done inside their houses, you know?

35:33.440 --> 35:40.800
They used to say at one time it belongs in the slums, now they say it belongs to people

35:40.800 --> 35:42.480
who can afford it.

35:42.480 --> 35:43.480
They hire people to do that.

35:43.480 --> 35:44.480
A lot of people do that kind of work.

35:44.480 --> 35:45.480
How do you feel about that?

35:45.480 --> 35:52.000
Well, me and this other guy were discussing the other day.

35:52.000 --> 35:56.000
They said the same people who came out of the college at that time and worked in the

35:56.000 --> 35:57.000
neighborhoods.

35:57.000 --> 36:04.400
Then later on, got the idea, they had more business savvy, I guess.

36:04.400 --> 36:09.040
They opened up their own shops, and the ones dealing with people downtown now.

36:09.040 --> 36:12.160
Like this store that opened up, Bloomingdale's, and whatever you call it.

36:12.160 --> 36:16.280
There's people doing work in there, and getting paid a lot of money.

36:16.280 --> 36:19.280
I ain't got none of the guests, so they can do it.

36:19.280 --> 36:22.280
It's all right with me.

36:22.280 --> 36:34.540
to be doing. I wouldn't mind. But I'd still be doing community art, because I feel more

36:34.540 --> 36:40.740
comfortable here. It's like, this guy is doing this and this and that, and my son's participating,

36:40.740 --> 36:48.180
my daughter's working with him. I don't know how to just say it. They seem like they appreciate

36:48.180 --> 36:52.300
it more. I don't know if that's the case or not. It might be.

36:52.300 --> 36:58.380
I'm just getting back to the whole, it seems to me as an outsider, that there's something

36:58.380 --> 37:02.980
about this kind of art that's really, I mean, maybe there's some in Polish neighborhoods

37:02.980 --> 37:07.180
every now and then you see one on Michigan Avenue or something, but it seems like it's

37:07.180 --> 37:09.820
more a part of your culture.

37:09.820 --> 37:14.580
Well, see, to begin with, like in Mexico, when you go into the pyramids, and there's

37:14.580 --> 37:20.540
a lot of murals there. So I might be mistaken, but I'm not too familiar with that part of

37:20.540 --> 37:29.340
history, but the Aztecs and local people that were living there were doing mural art in

37:29.340 --> 37:37.860
their temples. And I would take a guess at it and say that it has been like Latins who

37:37.860 --> 37:45.700
introduce mural art. Because Michelangelo was doing mural art, but it was different.

37:45.700 --> 37:51.980
See? He just took the space and put a figure there. He took the space and put whatever

37:51.980 --> 37:58.380
space he had, he put a figure there. Well done, of course. But then when Rivera and

37:58.380 --> 38:04.100
them came along, they used the space in a different manner. They're the ones that introduced,

38:04.100 --> 38:12.860
actually introduced the murals to the world, I would say, and using the technique that

38:12.860 --> 38:20.540
they used, like fresco, and cicadas using the geometric lines, like I try to use sometimes,

38:20.540 --> 38:28.620
you know. And this other man named Hector uses. He's the one that, this guy Hector,

38:28.620 --> 38:31.780
He's the one that been here a couple of years

38:31.780 --> 38:35.700
and sort of refreshing our minds on to use that.

38:36.940 --> 38:41.900
So I would say it does have Mexican roots,

38:41.900 --> 38:45.860
I would say, the mural, the modern mural movement.

38:47.700 --> 38:49.300
Going back to the people that were doing it,

38:49.300 --> 38:54.140
like Siqueiros Orozco and Rivera,

38:55.140 --> 38:56.980
and the rest of them that do murals,

38:58.620 --> 39:07.540
does come from Mexican roots, I would say no. Of course, when we do it, I'm not thinking

39:07.540 --> 39:14.180
about that. I'm trying to just do it so it comes out looking all right. I don't care

39:14.180 --> 39:15.180
what roots it has.

39:15.180 --> 39:22.180
I don't want to wear you out, can I ask you a few more questions?

39:22.180 --> 39:23.180
Sure.

39:23.180 --> 39:30.860
One thing I was curious about, someone like me walks up to these murals, are there ways

39:30.860 --> 39:33.860
that I could look at them to try to understand them?

39:33.860 --> 39:36.740
Are there certain symbols that are going to be recurring?

39:36.740 --> 39:39.740
You do see certain things in a lot of different murals.

39:39.740 --> 39:43.300
Are there things that you would tell me to look for,

39:43.300 --> 39:48.260
that you could explain to me that I might understand better?

39:48.260 --> 39:50.660
Well, I'm very basic about that, because you

39:50.660 --> 39:51.540
will look at colors.

39:51.540 --> 39:53.460
You see bright colors, you know it looks good.

39:53.460 --> 39:56.460
If it looks dark, it's indicating

39:56.460 --> 39:59.460
something maybe negative.

39:59.460 --> 40:02.820
Like in this case, I learned to use symbols.

40:02.820 --> 40:05.700
Instead of putting a lot of figures, maybe use two or three

40:05.700 --> 40:06.260
and that's it.

40:06.260 --> 40:08.020
And then colors.

40:08.020 --> 40:17.820
And then maybe like, like it has a dark sky, cloudy sky, indicating whatever negative things

40:17.820 --> 40:23.220
are going on now in politics or whatever.

40:23.220 --> 40:30.540
And drugs and crime and instead of putting a lot of figures there, indicating certain

40:30.540 --> 40:35.100
things, the storm behind it deals with all that, see?

40:35.100 --> 40:42.860
And then of course, a Thunderbird dove, you know, indicates that something's stopping

40:42.860 --> 40:43.860
it.

40:43.860 --> 40:48.780
You know, it's not in full gear, because there's people stopping certain things, you

40:48.780 --> 40:51.460
know.

40:51.460 --> 40:59.020
And the dove is not actually, it's not that white, you know, it doesn't look real white.

40:59.020 --> 41:03.960
So I mean, it's like in there doing something like working.

41:03.960 --> 41:08.800
And then under the wings of the WC, different colors, brighter colors, see?

41:08.800 --> 41:11.080
So it's not too difficult to understand.

41:11.080 --> 41:20.840
And then the two sides of the doorway show a boy and a girl in different atmospheres.

41:20.840 --> 41:22.920
So it's not too hard to read.

41:22.920 --> 41:28.800
Though some people might do things like that, you know, put a lot of different things so

41:28.800 --> 41:32.000
so that people look at it and keep coming back

41:32.000 --> 41:34.160
and trying to figure out what it says.

41:34.160 --> 41:35.960
And that's okay too, you know.

41:35.960 --> 41:38.240
But the way I do it, I figured I want to do it

41:38.240 --> 41:40.840
so that people can grasp it, you know.

41:40.840 --> 41:45.320
So that people don't go to museums often

41:45.320 --> 41:48.720
and they can see certain art form

41:48.720 --> 41:52.180
that they can speak about, you know.

41:53.440 --> 41:56.360
Then I have to be saying, oh, this line curves to the left

41:56.360 --> 41:57.760
and it means this, you know.

41:58.800 --> 42:03.280
and such grace and all that, that they talk about in the museums. I don't even know what

42:03.280 --> 42:09.800
they're talking about. All I see is the color and whatever the thing says there.

42:09.800 --> 42:33.640
the people used to like it. Because you can see anybody on the street, even when I'm

42:33.640 --> 42:37.200
away from the service, say, hey, here's a guy that painted that mural up there. He's

42:37.200 --> 42:45.440
mural man or the artist or whatever. See, a lot of the people don't like to be called

42:45.440 --> 42:53.320
artists, including me, because it's better that we're known as culture workers or something

42:53.320 --> 43:01.800
like that, other than artists. Because you think of artists as, I think as an artist

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when I think of Michelangelo or somebody like that. But I ain't no Michelangelo, just like

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like this guy told this other guy he wasn't no Kennedy. So more of a culture worker.

43:14.040 --> 43:16.940
EC? You don't think of yourself as an artist?

43:16.940 --> 43:21.640
JLR Not really. I never thought of myself as an

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artist. No. I just do that. I consider it more like work. The work I enjoy doing, see,

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that I enjoy doing. What sort of things, I mean, from what you,

43:36.920 --> 43:45.920
where you see your community going and the needs of the people around here, what do you

43:45.920 --> 43:50.920
see are the topics that you're going to be doing in the future? Do you have sort of a

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vision of where the murals are going to go? Yeah. Well, see, like we always have different

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ideas, you know, like this other wall that I'm going to do next year, we want to do

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some sculpture on it. Now we get enough money. See because like I said most of my murals

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were sponsored by the Chicago Office of Fine Arts. So we get a certain amount of money.

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And we're gonna see if we can get maybe more money from other sources so we can do a three

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dimensional cement relief you know and use different stuff that we see laying around

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like glass, sand, and different things that can be put into the mural. That's what I see.

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Do you see them moving towards this 3D? In my case, yeah. That's what I want to do.

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Yeah. As opposed to just painting, which is all right. Nothing wrong with that. But if

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we can get more money, we can, you know, do other stuff. And I hear they're cutting a

44:52.880 --> 45:00.280
a lot of that they might cut the funds for the arts, you know. So then, like a friend

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of mine was saying, we get used to being given money by these organizations and now we're

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going to have to go on our own, see if we got how to get a portfolio organized, get

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more publicity and do what the guys downtown are doing, open up, you know, sell your own

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self and get the money your own way, you know. It was not so much depend on the agencies,

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you know. Which in my case, if it wasn't for the agency, Chicago's Fine Arts, I wouldn't

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have enough money to do a mural, you know. Because it cost about $5,000 to do. I mean,

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the total of a mural. Does not count scaffolding and all that. Because people from the boys

45:49.200 --> 45:56.720
club pay for the scaffolding. Are there certain themes and things that you

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think are going to change, issues, or to do some new things in the community?

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Yeah, they're changing. Because for instance, if you go to an Arab community, there's things

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happening in their part of the world. And then the Latino community, this part happening

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in Central America, that might change, you know, they might get for the better. Or you

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see a lot of Irish people in their neighborhoods who are up on the politics of what's happening

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in their part of the world. So if you do a mural there, of course you discuss with them

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and say, well, do this, do that.

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Ireland is not like it was before,

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but this is what it is now.

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Or whatever country the man comes from or the woman.

46:49.100 --> 46:49.940
This tape's just a little.

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Okay, well, I probably pretty well talked your ear off.

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I didn't know, Susan, did you wanna ask a question or two?

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If you wouldn't.

Language Of Materials

English

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Format/Extent

Open Reel 1/4" ➜ 1800'

Genre

Documentary

Form

Interviews
Unedited

Subject

Street art
Art
Hispanic Americans

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Main Credits

Dobinsky, Susan (is co-producer)

Bayly, Ronn (is co-producer)

Regele, Susan (is co-producer)

Kurtz, Julia (is co-producer)

Participants And Performers

Guerrero, José (is participant)

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