Olivia Gude: And this mural has suffered. What happens with murals is that they start to get old. They start to fade. Then they start to chip a little bit. It ends up getting worse and worse and worse. I don't know, for those of you guys who live in Hyde Park, they used to have a mural on the wall where I painted "Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?" That mural just all of a sudden in one year fell off the wall over the winter. I called Astrid and I said, "Are you going to ever do something to put that back together? If not, I'd like to have that wall." I wouldn't paint on an artist's wall. She said, "Go for it." Anyway, this is mural is threatened. This is the kind of thing where a letter campaign to the Alderman saying, "We studied this," might help.

V2: Yes. The reason I brought up the State Representatives is because they have this bank of dollars called Member Initiatives. It came from tobacco suits. They've got this huge bank of money to win friends and influence people. So we need a lobbying effort…

Olivia Gude: Right now, you know it's funny how everybody talks about the pork in the State budget. I said, "I can tell you how easy it is to sell out." Chicago Public Art Project was down for $40,000 for restorations of murals. Instead of saying, "I hate that pork!" you're like, "Gold!" you know?

Voices: [laughing]

Olivia Gude: So now you know [inaudible]. So then this is in good shape. That's fine. Right. Go ahead. I don't know much about these. These spray pieces were never meant to be super permanent. They're kind of up-down. The spray paint doesn't actually last forever. They're nice, though. They're fun. I love that one in particular. And the one before that.

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