A Place To Work

8/14/2019 A Place To Work

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“A Place To Work, A Way To Tell One’s Story”

Perched in the eagle’s nest of the northwest, the uniqueness of my home in Los

Angeles is easily visible. My summers in the Gulf Islands surrounded byCanadian women writers and artists has given me a perspective on our Southernsprawl of a city and on what is truly American art by contrasts north and south.It is nearly thirty years ago now that three women artists wondered whether artcould indeed change our world, and opened in an abandoned police station, theSocial and Public Art Resource Center, to provide a place for suchexperimentation.

It was the adage “ It takes only a single spark to create a prairie fire whichinspired Christina Schlesinger, an artist and daughter of the great Americanhistorian Arthur Schlesinger, to give us the name SPARC when she along with

independent filmmaker Donna Deitch and I founded SPARC in 1976.The arts in Los Angeles at that time, were considered secondary to New York

and San Francisco, and artistic production was firmly entrenched in a class baseddivision in which the work of women and people of color was considered“inferior”, and “art for arts sake” was favored. It was thought then that artshould not challenge, with ethnically diverse aesthetics, political or socialcontent, the wealthy collectors and mainstream institutions. It was our intentionas young artists and activists to pursue the transformation of Los Angelesneighborhoods by creating monuments that rose out of the dreams aspirationsand issues of the people and to improve the conditions in los Angelesneighborhoods through the arts. I believed then as I do now in thetransformative power of ideas as long as they do not become calcified indoctrine. Our SPARC idea did become a prairie fire in thousands of murals citywide, nationwide and internationally.

In the early days at SPARC, I was a lucky young women artist who by accidentor perhaps providence met up with the likes of Minna Agins, an artist, who bythe time I came to know her, was well into the last part of her life. She gave legsto ideas even though she had only one real leg, the other made of plastic shecalled charley. She was the wife of a black listed doctor and an organizer for thepeace movement accustomed to difficult challenges. She came with muchexperience to activism. A Russian Jewish artist Born in Odessa and trained inMatisse’s workshop in Paris she had organized for social security, marched in thebread lines, organized workers in the 30’s. She carved wooden blocks to makeher prints on the issues that so defined her life, all of which essentially, expressedthe depth of an individuals capacity for human compassion. The eight-hour day,the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources in the protection of ourair, water, and land, women’s rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social



Security - all these were launched as citizen’s movements in which Minnaparticipated along with others of her generation.

I met Minna in the studio of another artist, Marvin Grayson, who passed thisyear, who was her life long friend. I heard the wheels of a walker scraping acrossthe pavement when Minna entered his studio that day with tools clasped in onehand the other on her walker. She would change my life as real mentors do.“These tools need sharpening”, she proclaimed as she walked through the door.Minna had lost her leg to arterial sclerosis and had just come out of rehabilitationat Rancho Los Amigos where she had learned to walk again on a prosthesis. Itwas a difficult setback for the printmaker, as she could no longer manage thelarge press in her studio alone and the beginning of our deep friendship.

I offered space and help, and shortly thereafter Minna moved her studio toSPARC and was, for the last 15 years of her life, our daily companion. At SPARCshe had able-bodied young artists present to help her print who loved to hear her

stories. She provided much more to us in those years then our gift of space andable hands provided her. So often the greatest gift to an artist is simply thosethings; a place to work, a way to tell one’s story . She provided the knowledge ofan entire movement for justice that yielded the American Safety net, and the artsrole within it. Minna provided us the grounding that was so essential while weat SPARC were beginning a new work for fulfillment of the American socialcontract for democratic inclusion through the arts during the massivedemographic changes of the 70’s-90’s in los Angeles. We too would workalongside a movement for civil rights. This required understanding of theartistic precedents for our work in the artworks of people like Minna Agins, andDavid Alfaro Siqueiros. Siqueiros left the important legacy of the censored mural“America Tropical” in the historic pueblo of los Angeles in 1931. This workrecently restored by the Getty Institute will open to the public next year but evenas a whitewashed work it lived in our hearts. It is only through theunderstanding of those who proceeded us that true innovation can occur.

In the last year of her life Minna worked with another women well into hernineties, the great poet of the plains Mary del LeSuer on a series of works called“We keep our tenderness alive ” the title of Mary Del’s poetry series. The two oldwomen labored together to give voice and vision to the ideas that they hadworked a life time to support and strengthen.

Following the tradition of Los Tres Grandes the great Mexican muralists of thiscentury, SPARC ‘s first project was the half mile long Great wall of Los Angelesmural painted on the ethnic history of los Angeles on an endless wall providedby a site which was a scar where there river once ran. In the los Angeles floodcontrol channel in the san Fernando valley, 400young people labored over atwelve year period under my direction with 40 artists representing the richdiversity of our city participating. Like a tattoo on a scar we made a place for



our stories to be told and taught compassion by teaching the children to hear andvalue them and each other.

Now the children of the great wall are grown and a new generation beginsinterpreting their history on a virtual wall broadcast on the internet. The wallslegacy continues first as proposed mural on the internet and then as a paintedmural continued on the site by the children of the Great Wall. Our dream is towatch as the longest mural is continued by the next generation of youth andartists interpreting history. The Great Wall youth still connected to the projectcan speak with insight of adults about their experience working on the giantmonument to interracial harmony 27yrs later. The California communityfoundation provided support for the restoration of the first sections of the nevervandalized wall now in need of repair from the sun and weather just as theyhelped support its initial production so many year ago.

The Great wall productions spurned another production in the citywide murals

of SPARC’s Great walls program: entitled the Neighborhood pride program,which concluded this year with its 109 th mural. These murals speak to the multiethnic, multi faith multicentered aspects of the our city “ people often decry thelack of heart in the city of los angels but Los Angeles has many heart beatingsimultaneously an inexhaustibly “Pete Galindo Sparc Neighborhood PridePublic art director. Through Pete never met Minna he is the benefactor of hergifts as we each in turn mentor the next generation of leadership in the arts. Thisis also the important work of the California community foundation makingmentor ship possible.

Philanthropy is about hopefulness and the belief that we can create a better

world. This is what the funding of the arts at the California Communityfoundation is doing when it gives the gift to an artist of “a place to work, a wayto tell one’s story” through it granting programs. In doing this they pass on thepossibility of continuing mentorship’s and provide the sparks that can becomeprairie fires Because through the arts we can hear each others stories And it isthrough hearing these stories and making them matter that “we keep ourtenderness alive”.

El fin

.Their must be places where the bottom line is not the amount of money we makebut hearing each others stories and making them matter.

Where else but los Angeles could a young women artist embarking on theproduction of the longest mural in the world form a partnership with Minna



gains , Christina Schlesinger the daughter of the historian who pressed us to readthe works of the WPA and pr

Documents

A Place To Work