14

Women in the Community Mural Movement

Eva Cockcroft

Women's role in the community mural move-
ment is much greater than is generally recog-
nized. Major city-sponsored mural programs in
Boston (Adele Seronde and Summerthing), New
York (Susan Shapiro-Kiok and Cityarts), and Los
Angeles (Judy Baca and Citywide) have been
initiated and directed by women artists, who
have given these programs much of their char-
acter and philosophy. Women have led school
mural projects, mural collectives, and mural-
work with street youth. Whether working as
individual muralists, members of coalitions, or
in collectives, women have increasingly dom-
inated the mural movement as a force for non-
elitism, collectivity, and the practice of so-
cial philosophies ranging from humanism to
Marxism.

Murals 'on urban walls reflecting the aspira-
tions of neighborhood residents began as part of
the more general social upheaval of the 1960s.
Artists found themselves dragged into the social
arena and forced to consider questions beyond
those of pure form. By the late 1960s they could
no longer avoid confronting questions concern-
ing the relevance, audience, and uses of their
art. A number of movements arose that tried to
enlarge the audience and scope of contempo-
rary art. Minority-group and politically active
artists felt both a demand and an opportunity to
create an art responsive to their special heritage
and relevant to their own ethnic group, com-
munity, or movement. Mainstream artists at-
tempted to bring art out of the museums and
into the cities in the form of urban super-
graphics, environmental sculptures, street-
works, and happenings. Out of the coincidence
of these social and artistic forces the communi-
ty mural movement began in 1967-68.

The mural movement took on different forms
in different locations, depending on which par-
ticular combination of social forces spurred its
beginnings. The first mural in Chicago, the 1967
Wall of Respect, was painted by 21 Black artists
from the Organization of Black American Cul-
ture (OBAC) and celebrated Black history and
culture. It was a political-art happening involv-
ing musicians and poets who played and read as
the painting progressed. Although women art-
ists participated in the Wall of Respect, they
were not among those who continued the
movement in Chicago and went from the OBAC
wall to paint in Detroit.

For a long time Vanita Green’s Black Women

(1970) served as the token of women’s participa-
tion in the Chicago mural movement. Green
was 17, a high school dropout, when she saw
William Walker painting the Peace and Salva-
tion Wall of Understanding near the Cabrini-
Green projects where she lived. After watching
for a time, she asked Walker for paints and
brushes and on a storage shed nearby painted
portraits of famous Black women from Aunt
Jemima to Angela Davis. Almost immediately
afterwards, the wall was defaced with large
splashes of white paint, practically the only de-
facement in Chicago up to that time. When
Green saw what the vandals had done, she com-
mented, “Before, it was just a pretty picture,
but it says more now.” In general, though, dur-
ing those early years women found their place
largely as assistants and apprentices in one of
the two major community-based Chicago mural
groups: Public Art Workshop, led by Mark
Rogovin, and Chicago Mural Group, a multi-
ethnic coalition led by William Walker and John
Weber.

In Boston, on the other hand, women played
an important role in introducing the mural idea.
Boston artist Adele Seronde’s proposal calling
for the use of neglected city sites to transform
the city into a museum was the start. Through
the collaboration of Kathy Kane of the Mayor’s
Office of Cultural Affairs, the Institute of Con-
temporary Art, a number of Black artists, and
Seronde, Summerthing was launched. It was the
largest and most productive of the early mural
programs, beginning in 1968 and peaking in
1970. The Summerthing program combined ele-
ments of three distinct phenomena which had
emerged the preceding year—the renaissance in
Black culture (Wall of Respect), the “Summer in
the City Paint-in Festival” and various clean-up
programs, and the desire of environmental art-
ists to work in urban spaces. Summerthing
sponsored Black Power murals, children’s play-
ground and pocket-park projects, and decora-
tive walls—all within a framework allowing for
neighborhood control. Under Seronde’s direc-
tion, the program emphasized the sociological
rather than the decorative aspect of public art.
Many impressive walls were painted from 1968
to 1970, especially in the Black communities of
Roxbury and South End—including the first
women’s wall, Sharon Dunn’s Black Women,
painted in 1970.

Seronde is only one of many women who