Olivia Gude: The best part of the mural…I think you missed the part underneath the underpass where there's this woman. Actually, I think there's another article, actually. If you look up in Feminist Studies Journal, there's an article called, "Two Women on the Street." It's [Beia], who was my student at the University of Chicago when I brought her into the mural movement, and me, talking about what does it mean to be women standing on the street painting. One thing she talked about in the mural is the image that's just to the left of this. She's a very strong-looking, shapely tough-looking woman. We talked about what it meant to paint a woman's body and make her, this painted woman, vulnerable to the insults of the society. Or can we paint an image that's strong enough to resist that? That's one of the things we talked about; one of the many issues about being a woman artist. So I would totally recommend that, that's something in here. It's a nice little dialogue article. We're talking to each other. Again, it's interesting, because it's an intergenerational piece. Under City of Stone, Carol [inaudible] up in Wisconsin, now. Again, I talked to her about this, and she is not…

M2: This is also horribly blasted with these white marks.

Olivia Gude: I know.

M2: It's one of those sections where they don't show it.

Olivia Gude: And this used to be pretty cool with the tags on it. I think so. It's just a shame that they've been doing that. I'd like to see this mural saved. Just because this is one of the first murals that I ever saw when I moved to Hyde Park in 1975. It was one of the first murals that I ever saw, and one of the murals that inspired me to be a muralist.

M2: It has a lot of literary stuff in it, too. The name is based on a poem. A lot of the poem is written into the mural.

Olivia Gude: Right. There is something sort of bizarre about this mural. You look at it and say, "Boy, that makes me feel perky, seeing all these people ground down under city stone." You know, psychologically, it's a little wacky. You know? But it's so great. I guess maybe it echoes how we feel some days. That feeling of, "Oh, we're keeping on keeping on."

M2: These murals that were done under the Metras, I don't know whether you all get paid well or what, but I think not. Right?

Olivia Gude: You'll appreciate this. You know the standards I set when I start raising money for…over the years, we've raised these. My standards that I set was I think that a muralist should get paid as much as a teacher. That's always a standard that we've gone by. Sometimes we make it and sometimes we don't. But that is what we…In those days, I was a young-enough teacher that that wasn't an issue. Now I think about that part of it, too. But, no. That's what I've always tried to say. At least we deserve the respect to be paid what teachers are paid. And teachers should be paid more than they get paid. But that's our standard. That's how we explain to people how much we should get paid for a project.

M2: Well, what I was about to say probably was not really truest of the money. But what I was about to say is that these things that are on the Metra tracks and these other kind of non-affiliated places are very daring and have very striking messages about society. The ones that are painted on schools and that are paid for by groups which don't want any downers on their buildings are…

Olivia Gude: You know, it's really true. Even, "Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?" which is sort of aesthetically different and new, I was able to do that, because, in a way, there are free zones. It was paid for by Chicago Public Art Group and by this interdisciplinary NEA experimental grant program. So, yes. Exactly. You gravitate to those. Actually, there's another mural you guys don't have that you really should get. But you only have part of the South Side. Not all of South Side.

M2: Well, not all of the South Side.

Olivia Gude: Now that I have moved to Bridgeport, I don't think you should exclude Bridgeport.

M2: Of course, we had to eliminate because it becomes too difficult. But we were concentrating on the areas around these 29 schools.

Olivia Gude: That mural is in the book, "Fellows and Others," that I'd painted. It's actually a mural on a community center. It's a really interesting mural because it's on a place called "Fellowship House." The mural is about how people decide who's a fellow and who's an other. So what I basically did was painted all these murals about bridging the gaps. About bridging the gaps of racism. This mural's about the fact that these gaps aren't natural; these are created gaps. So it's about how do you decide who's a fellow and who's an other? It's almost more like an art installation than a mural. There are all these different texts, and stuff. Of course, being more excited about one of your most recent works, I'd extend the boundaries just so you could include that work.

V2: There you go.

Olivia Gude: Let me take a minute, and if you want, I'll just show you some of these papers I have here that have the city [inaudible].

V2: What's the name of that?

Olivia Gude: The name of the mural?

V2: Yes.

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