Olivia Gude: That has a lot of writing. But somebody else was involved in painting that. You know what? I didn't put that one in the book. But I think I actually have an information card on that. But anyway, let's talk about preservation for a minute. One of the things that happened…I know I'm a little bit digressing, but not completely. A lot of "Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?" - one of the really meaningful experiences for me in painting that. By the way, the way I did that was that we used projection. So the figures were painted and I would type those things up on transparencies and use a regular overhead projector, like you use in a school, shine it on the wall and then laboriously hand-lettering the writing on there. That's why it looks so machine-like. So one night I'm out in Hyde Park; 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, lettering on the wall, I had an assistant with me. I was aware that somebody was on the street looking at me. You kind of learn that when you're on the street, people stop and look at you because they want to watch the mural being painted, but you learn to kind of have this dual-awareness. So the person stood there for a pretty long time. I couldn't see him because I was looking back into the light of the overhead. Since you're a teacher, you know what I'm talking about. Then he moves, and I see him silhouetted against the streetlight, and it was William Walker. I had never met William Walker, and he'd already become somewhat of a…I take it back. I'd actually met him maybe once. He basically…in talking to him, I found out that over the years, even though he doesn't go around that much, he totally keeps track of who's painting what and where. He just like emerges. He watches you. It's wonderful. But that experience of meeting Mr. Walker and talking to him and painting that mural and asking that question over and over of, "Where are we coming from? Where are we going?" I started to reflect on this mural, which was very deteriorated at the time. Mr. Walker's mural on the other side of the underpass. I started to really have a lot of thought about the elders in our movement. A lot of people of my generation when I was a young person thought, "Fuck the elders; let's go!" Then you kind of say, "Wait a minute. These were the people who created…" And I started to become more aware of history, too. The book came out of that experience, too. Basically I started to say, "Where are we coming from?" And I started to really think about all of these incredible murals. And how fragile the condition of them was. And to recognize that it would be entirely possible that all these murals could be gone within 10-15 years. Just be gone. So the first restoration really was when I got Bernard Williams in for very little money. I forget how much money we gave him for working. But we donated our own paint and scaffold and everything. And we restored that mural. We did that and we were the ones who did Color in the Background and the Rousseau quote that was there about childhood and that. That was written originally by Walker, but he had written it kind of messy. So we decided that really wasn't that historically significant and we put it in really pretty. That was all like that until a couple of years ago when these spray kids came and white-washed out the wall and started doing spray paints right there. Then they were stopped from doing it. But that's why all that is messed up, now. Basically, I would've gone back and dealt with that sooner. But you know that they're going to be redoing a lot of the train station. The plan is that there's a scheduled plan of me going back to that station in the Summer of this year. I'll be restoring the mural that was there. I'll be restoring Walker's mural. And I'll be creating a new part of, "Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?" I haven't decided what that's going to be about or like, yet. But that's going to be a really cool thing. So that's something you might want to be aware of. It's something that is going to be kind of happening and it's going to be new and restoration. But this issue of restoration comes up and then after that, one of the things that starts to happen in the Chicago Public Art Group. That, by the way, is a 33-year old group. We have about 17 core artists and about 30 artists that are active artists. Core means that you've worked with the group so long you're sort of elected in as a full member of the group. We're one of the oldest multiracial arts organizations in the city, I think. It's hard to know who's older than we are, exactly. And we have another thing that's really pretty stunning. That is that we're a multigenerational group. William Walker's still in touch with us, but the other founder was John [inaudible] Webber. He's still an active muralist. There are people of all different generations. One of the people I've been doing a lot of collaboration with is Juan Chavez. He was first my student on a project when he was 15 in 1987. One of the things we try to do in our group is to recognize that in our group there are many cross-racial collaborations. The reason for that is that we believe that you can't authentically paint a mural about multiracial communities unless you deal with those issues in the painting of the mural. It can't be something just that the kids are a multiracial team. It has to be the adults who are also modeling the process of the pleasures and the pains of trying to work cross-culturally. And in recent years, I've become more and more convinced that a lot of these issues we call "racial" are actually generational issues. A lot of times when there's racial conflict in a neighborhood, we have an older generation of one race and a younger generation that's another race. But we talk about it all as race when a lot of it has to do with age. That's why I think it's so significant that Juan and I have started to work together. We've really consciously tried as a group to do something in the past five years. That was to destroy the Oedipal myth of art-making. That is the way to become an artist is to destroy the parent artist. You react against the artist before. I think if someone comes out of the Women's movement, I mean, it started for me because I'm emotionally sensitive. So somebody that I thought would really be mean to me is like [inaudible]. Then I realized what was happening was that I was king of the hill. Or I was queen of the hill. I was the top-dog muralist around. So people were going to react against me. So I started to say, "Can't we reconstruct our group? Can't we reconstruct our practice?" So we could basically have a way for young people to become full-fledged adult artists without having to have this angry reaction? Can't we re-invent the notion of cultural development that's not always a history of aggression? I think we've been doing some nice work with that. That also then comes to this other issue. That's this issue of preservation. So many of these murals right now are in danger for so many different reasons. We've worked very hard, and some of these murals that you guys are missing, I should point out, that, but [inaudible] or something later. We did some great work on the [packing house] mural and things like that.

M2: I didn't have a picture of that because that's out of our zone. But it's one of…

Olivia Gude: It's been beautifully restored, recently. All these murals are generally in this area; the Bronzeville area. We're restoring the [inaudible] "Black Women Emerging" mural just recently. We've also restored, "Builders of the Cultural Present," right there at 71st and Jeffrey. That's been restored.

M2: I think this is going to come down. Did you know that?

Olivia Gude: We'll talk about that in a minute. We restored it. One of the reasons that we chose to restore these murals first was to keep them from taking the walls down. Basically, what I would really say is that for people who are involved in curriculum, I think a really activist component of your curriculum could be to have the students work on campaigns to save cultural treasures in Chicago. I think this could be a really significant aspect of the work that you do. If you would just like to briefly go through these one at a time, I could just give you a little note on each one about some of the things that are happening that we're talking about. So the first one…this one here, the problem is that this one, "A Time to Unite," and another one that we've looked at is right across the street from there. They're all on raised land that used to have railroad tracks across it and now has the systematic redevelopment and gentrification of these neighborhoods that's taking place. One of the things that they might do is tear down those embankments. The thing is, the Park District has a ton of money; the City has a ton. There's no reason why they couldn't [inaudible] and let these walls remain. Except for the fact that they're like, "Well you know what? We used to have this high land here. Now we don't need the railroad tracks and it's just sitting there from when it was a poor neighborhood. So now we're going to clean this place up. That means making it flat." That's really what it comes down to. So as soon as we got some more restoration money, these were one of the things that we slated for restoration. We thought we had a much better chance of saving them, even though we risked spending the restoration money on something that might be torn down. We felt we had a much better position for saving them if they were in pristine condition.

M2: This hasn't been restored yet, right? I just took this picture a few weeks ago.

Olivia Gude: They restored three of these in this area. Maybe I'm wrong. But I thought they did "Time to Unite."

M2: Not unless it's in the last few weeks.

Olivia Gude: Well, they can't paint in the winter. But anyway, maybe I'm wrong and it's not this one. They did the [inaudible] one and there are two others in the Bronzeville neighborhood that are similarly threatened that we've been working on. So anyway, the general principle is there. Here's the other thing that's crazy. They're talking about doing economic development for culture in places like Bronzeville. But you know what? You don't tear down the actual, authentic, significant culture and then think you're going to do some Disneyland version of culture that's going to attract people. People aren't fools. People are into real culture. This kind of cultural legacy. So this whole notion of all these murals that were painted on these different walls…Sidal's mural, this mural, [inaudible]…all these different murals are at threat, right now. That's something that I think we need to try to draw attention to.

M: While we were out photographing, we ran into the man that was photographing to tear them down.

V2: Have you had any dialog with the State representatives?

Olivia Gude: You know, the thing is, we're a small group. We have actually my husband, who's executive director, who's actually on leave right now, because he won the Chicago Community Trust Fellowship this year, and he's looking at the intersection of community organizing, urban planning, and public art. So that's a very important opportunity for us to have more range in thinking about these issues. But we're a very small group. We're a group that needs, for murals to be saved, we need the advocacy of other people to recognize these things. This mural here again is a mural that is very much…Bernard has been doing a lot of restorations. He loves the mural, as do I. Passionately, as do many other people. This mural is in danger. This mural is in danger in part because the Alderman, Dorothy Tillman, does not particularly know if she wants the mural restored, as it presents a negative image of the community.

V2: She's got low self-esteem.

Olivia Gude: That's how I'd put it. But the thing is, it's so ridiculous. She's trying to develop this theater and she's trying to develop this black cultural mecca. But then she wants to tear down this. You can see that she…is ambivalent. You know?

M2: It's just the most amazing thing in the world that this was ever put up. It's a real tribute to the community and to the artist, because it's such an outrageous thing to have in the middle of a business community. It's so challenging.

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