Their two best-known walls, Latinoamerica
and the Paco’s Tacos Stand mural were both
done in the spring and summer of 1974. They
celebrate the beauty and richness of the Latin
tradition. For Latinoamerica, the four women
comprising the original core of Mujeres Mural-
istas—Patricia Rodriguez, Consuelo Mendez
Castillo, Irene Perez, and Graciela Carrillo de
Lopez—worked together to create the design.
Different parts of the mural are painted by each
artist in her individual style; yet the mural suc-
ceeds as a unified work because of the clear
organization, and the distinctively bright, clear
color that is characteristic of the group. In the
Paco’s Tacos mural the unity is more tenuous.
The wall divides into two distinctly different
halves reflecting the different artistic styles of
Consuelo Mendez Castillo and Graciela Carrillo
de Lopez. In many ways Mujeres Muralistas
was never really a “collective”, but rather a
group of women who came together to work on
a particular wall mural. An almost instant fame
forced them into a prematurely formalized exis-
tence as a ‘“collective group,” while leaving
them little time to resolve differences in politi-
cal consciousness between members of the
group, or cultural differences between Chicana
and Latin American women. The problem of
individualism was never really tackled, al-
though there was an attempt to make decisions
by a consensus of the group. Internal differen-
ces caused the group to dissolve formally early
in 1976. The women who comprised Mujeres
Muralistas are now working as individual
muralists.

Many mural-painting collectives, including
most of those that grew out of the largely white
counterculture and anti-war movements, either
start with women who then invite male artists
in, or simply include both women and men.
Often led by women with roots in Marxism and
feminism, these collectives tend to be strongly
anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, and to use overtly
political images in their artwork. One of these
groups was the People’s Painters of New Jersey,
who “muralized” Livingston College from 1972
to 1974. Modeled after the Ramona Parra Bri-
gades of Allende’s Chile, the People’s Painters
were concerned equally with the political ef-
fects of their murals and with trying to over-
come individualism and a sense of personal
ego. Their first wall was for the Livingston
Women’s Center, which was very appropriate
since the founders of the group—Julia Smith,
Kathy Jones, and myself —considered ourselves
activists in the Women'’s Liberation Movement.
We worked on the design collectively, discuss-
ing ideas first and then finding the images. We
chose to work in a simple style, using heavy
black outlines and flat color, so that the women
at the Center could help us paint. We also con-
sciously worked over parts of the mural that
others had originated to combat the tendency

to say at the end of the project, “And this part is
mine.” While we did not wholly succeed in
eliminating our sense of personal ego, we did
find that by consciously emphasizing collec-
tivity in our work we could overcome personal
insecurities and achieve stronger political and
artistic results. We went on to incorporate men
into our group and painted eight other murals
before agreeing to disperse in 1974, when some
of our members graduated and others decided
to go on to other things.

The Haight-Ashbury Muralists in San Francis-
co, a collective led by Jane Norling, see them-
selves as “anti-imperialist cultural workers.”
Their first mural, Rainbow People, was painted
in 1972 as part of a large anti-war demonstra-
tion. A Haight landmark, Rainbow People was
repainted and updated in 1974. Unity Eye (1973)
diagrams the ingredients for creating a revolu-
tionary culture in the United States. The mural
shows a revolution peopled and led by women,
and was painted by an all-female team. Most
recently, the Haight-Ashbury Muralists have
been working on a 300-foot-long history of the
class struggle in San Francisco.

The most radical and problematic challenge
to tradition has been the development of col-
lective murals in which non-artist members of a
community work with an artist-facilitator who
helps them to create their own mural. While a
strong emphasis on community participation
characterizes all community mural projects,
this particular emphasis reflects an attempt to
create a “people’s art” in every sense of the
word. Simply providing paint and a wall to teen-
agers and young adults is not the answer. There
must be a direction, a method for working co-
operatively, and a technique that makes it pos-
sible to bypass the need for years of study of
drawing and design.

The most complete method, and the model
for much related work elsewhere in the nation,
was developed by Susan Shapiro-Kiok and the
Cityarts staff in New York City. This method
begins with a number of concept meetings dur-
ing which the theme is discussed. In the early
Cityarts Workshop murals, scenes were acted
out and developed, photographed, and then
projected and traced. When the mock-up was
complete, it was enlarged by an opaque projec-
tor and painted in. Black Women of Africa
Today (1971), designed and executed by teen-
age girls at “The Smith” housing project on the
Lower East Side, is typical of the early silhouette
style. Later murals became more complex as the
technique came to include the use of drawings
and slides as well as photographs and the
opaque projector. The Jewish ethnic mural at
the Bialystoker Old People’s Home is a collage
of images designed and painted by a group of
Jewish teenagers under the direction of Susan
Caruso-Green (current director of Cityarts
Workshop).

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