M2: By the way; I happened to like that mural a great deal. This is sort of a technical question. How does the business of writing, rather the statements on the murals fit into the nature of things? I've seen a lot of murals like that. But large statements written right into the pictures. That seems to be almost unique in murals, too. I don't think there are any pictures in galleries that have stories written right next to them.

Olivia Gude: Actually, there's been a lot of text art. One of the critiques of art since the 1980s, if you went to art school, you'll know what I'm talking about, was that there was said to be a lot of art with so much writing that you almost faint standing in the gallery trying to read all the writing that was on the art. In general, there's not really been a lot of writing on murals. The one person who did a lot of writing on murals is Sydal Webber. Maybe if you have your little thing on, I can point to some of these and have you turn it on. Sydal Webber is a really interesting guy. Muralist, minister and naturopath. Alternative health practice. You probably know of him. From back in the early days, he used to do a lot of poetry writing on murals. For example, if you look at "Man's Inhumanity to Man…"

M2: Yes. That's really.

Olivia Gude: Or "The Wall of Daydreaming."

M2: Talk about something that's absolutely the opposite of what you were talking about before.

Olivia Gude: Right. Go to the next one. There's two of…

M2: No. They are together. Yes. That's the same.

Olivia Gude: You can't really see it in the picture, but actually in the center here…there's a whole section. Do you see that right there? That's writing. Sydal Webber…

M2: Wait, why are we saying Sydal Webber? Is this Mitchell…

Olivia Gude: No, This mural was painted by two people. This mural was painted by Mitchell [inaudible] and William Walker. They basically divided the wall in half. One did one half and the other did the other half.

M2: That's very strange.

Olivia Gude: That's the Walker section. Right.

M2: Very striking and strong, powerful statements against contemporary society. Really one thing that interested me is that Walker did this, which is really a scary picture if you look at it carefully. Then he did this, too.

Olivia Gude: Right. And by the way, you know, I was going to mention that. Some of the very first…Walker first used the image of interlocking faces as all black faces in the "Wall of Respect." But very soon after that, Walker began to make these interlocking faces multiracial.

M2: Well that's very interesting.

Olivia Gude: Yes. And he had talked about the reasons why he did both. He's just a very deep person. He's still around.

V4: I was going to ask if he's still alive.

Olivia Gude: You might be able to sweet talk him out, but it's hard. He's pretty much…you know where he hangs out? He goes over to a place that books [inaudible] tables about?

M2: Oh, yes. That [inaudible]

Olivia Gude: Yes. He hangs out there sometimes. But he is very elusive. One of the last times we got him to go somewhere specifically was because my husband had a Karmen Ghia. Bill used to have a Karmen Ghia, so he got him to go for a ride in the Karmen Ghia. But he lives in an apartment in the home of Margaret Burroughs, who was for many years the Du Sable museum director. Which, by the way, her home has incredible wall murals by Walker. Unbelievable. Hardly anyone's ever seen them. So that's an interesting thing.

M2: This is one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

Olivia Gude: I know. And I'm going to stay away from that and leave this up for a minute.

M2: Okay.

Olivia. What I was going to say is that Sydal Webber used to do a lot of this poem-prayer writing in murals. But you'll say, "Hey, wait a minute. That's [Cattan's] murals." Well, the thing is, those guys were much more like jazz improvisation. They would just start doing these things. You know? If you look around, there are a lot of old murals that have fragments of these Sydal Webber poems on them. He was one of the people who really wrote on murals. Another person who wrote on murals did the Martin Luther King piece.

M2: Okay.

Olivia Gude: You know, the purple one?

M2: Oh, yes. The one on 40th and…

Olivia Gude: Yes.

M2: Yes. That's very badly decayed.

Olivia Gude: That's a relatively new mural.

M2: Maybe I'm wrong, then.

Olivia Gude: It's faded. It's very faded. Yes. This one.

M2: Yes. It's with all the writing on it. It's almost too much writing.

Olivia Gude: I like it.

M2: Except it's writing you can relate to, you don't have to exactly read it because it's quotes from Martin Luther King, so you just know what it is.

Olivia Gude: Right.

M: Isn't that also the place where they're going to tear those down?

Olivia Gude: This is the next thing I want to talk about. I'm trying to give you a sense of what some of these issues are.

M2: Correct me, though. You've been saying Sydal Webber and this says Sylla?

Olivia Gude: C, Sydal or Sylla, Webber. He's a man of many names. Many muralists have many names.

M2: Was there something else you wanted to say?

Olivia Gude: Yes. In terms of the text thing, there aren't that many murals that have a lot of text. Sydal did that and I started to think while I did the Roseland Pullman mural, I noticed that over 100 people worked on that mural. They had a credit box, and there's over 100 names in it. I started to notice because I lived right in that neighborhood where I made the mural. The people would be standing there and read every name on the list of 100 names. Then they'd be like, "Oh, yes. I know that person." Or whatever. I used to think, "You know, it's so interesting. People never want to read poetry because they just don't have time. But they'll stand here and read this wall." Then I also started to think about some of the wonderful things that were said during this collaborative design process. What the mural captured, we think, were some of the wonderful images that came out of that. What they weren't capturing were some of the wonderful words that came out of that. That's when I said, "Well, look. If people want to stand around and read these things, truth of it is you don't have to read it all at once." The murals are there. One day you're a little early for the train. So you stand there and read for a few minutes. Another day… Another thing I've always said about the idea of mural design is that good murals unfold over time. That's one way to be a good mural. It continues to unfold new revelations to you over time. So this notion of having these texts that would unfold as people got involved in them. It was like, "Okay." But I noticed that much writing on murals was because I'd look at what Sydal had on murals and I thought, "That's pretty cool. I'm going to start writing all over the place, but in a sort of different way." I do it much more in a machine-like way. That probably reflects the generation that I came out of. Since I did that, I actually inspired a lot of younger muralists. So now there is a lot of writing on murals. But that's actually something that is relatively recent. Sydal was like the poetry muralist and I became like the text muralist. A lot of the artists are now using texts in their piece. Again, partly because we all are influenced by our elders. It's a funny day when you suddenly realize you've become an elder.

M2: Do you recognize this?

Olivia Gude: Oh, that's the one they did across the street. Right. No, I'm not sure who did that.

M2: This has a lot of writing in it, too.

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