By Robert Atkins

Mike Alewitz is no stranger to the press. Controversies stirred up by his mural projects have been stoked on editorial pages and by television news outlets for the past 20 years. The 49-year old muralist is probably the most vandalized artist in North America today. A dozen of his more than two dozen community- or labor-oriented murals have been attacked, including walls in Boston (devoted to Elijah Pate, a young African-American who was killed by the Boston Police Department in 1984); Austin, Minnesota (the infamous "P- 9" painted during a meatpackers' strike and then sandblasted at the order of the union's international officers in 1985 ); New York City (the Pathfinder Mural censored by Socialist Workers Party officials in 1988 after Alewitz objected to following party dictates about how and what to paint); and Nicaragua, where he created numerous leftist murals during the Sandinista era. Some of these murals have been publicly funded, others union-sponsored, and many have relied on small donations from individuals. His detractors are equally wide-ranging. They span an entire ideological spectrum from racists and bigots who assault works intended to encourage community harmony to community leaders who fear his gritty working-class messages. He is currently creating the first mural painting program in the eastern United States at Central Connecticut State University.

The artist's latest work has again sparked dispute. Baltimore Clayworks, an arts organization, selected him for a residency in Maryland to create "The Dreams of Harriet Tubman": five murals designated for sites within Tubman's native Maryland. Nineteenth-century heroine Harriet Tubman was born a slave and is best known for her role as a builder and "conductor" of the Underground Railroad, the secret network which spirited slaves from the South to the North. But she did much more than that. A pistol-packing spy and guerilla, she worked with John Brown and his group on a daring raid to liberate the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and incite a slave uprising.

For his mural cycle, Alewitz wanted to pay homage to the entirety of Tubman's long and impressive life. These experiences include her post-Civil War roles as a nurse, educator, and champion of the first wave of American feminism, as well as her narcoleptic (or perhaps epileptic) dreams of the Amistad and Nat Turner slave rebellions, and the fact that she was reverently dubbed "Moses" by many of those whom she helped.

Detail- Sketch for Associated Black Charities Building

The anchor of the "necklace" of murals was to be a 25' x 123' painting in Baltimore depicting Tubman as Moses. She would part the seas for the slaves who joined the union ranks to defeat the South, and be supplemented by more contemporary heroes such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Mumia Abu Jamal. Among the Pharoah's "drowning" forces would be slavers, KKK members and Nazis. But the controversial part of the design turned out to be Tubman's gun — Alewitz had depicted her with a rifle in hand. The mural was intended for the side of the building housing Associated Black Charities, Inc, whose board balked at hosting an image that included Tubman holding a gun. Donna Jones Stanley, the group's Executive Director, asserted that it is "inappropriate for a piece of artwork [like this]... to be displayed on our wall in Baltimore, which had more than 300 murders last year." A few weeks later, at the end of July, another of the five Tubman murals, situated at Magnolia Middle School about 20 miles northeast of Baltimore, was defaced with images of swastikas and racial epithets before it had even been completed.

Robert Atkins, MediaChannel Media Arts Editor, spoke to an undaunted Mike Alewitz about the muralist's apparent summer of discontent.

Robert Atkins: Can you begin with an update about the state of the Magnolia Middle School mural?

Mike Alewitz: As you know the Magnolia Middle School mural was vandalized. The vandals haven't been found, but the community response was unified and supportive. I wasn't surprised that the incident took place.

RA: Why?

MA: Generally I like to go to an area and meet with the community, with students and workers, so [an upcoming mural is] not just presented as a fact. That didn't really happen for a variety of reasons. And there are always racists and people opposed to this stuff. But it's finished now, as is the little piece for Harriet Tubman Park, Harriet's birthplace.

RA: What about the other three of the five murals?

MA: The portable mural that was intended to travel is also done. I painted it at the wonderful American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, and it's a smaller version of the giant mural that was intended for the Associated Black Charities. What's left is the Frederick Douglass Library mural at the University of Maryland's Eastern Shore campus. [Regarding a site for the giant mural,] I met with [Baltimore] Mayor Martin O'Malley, and he said: "I will find a wall for Harriet and her gun." So we'll see.

RA: You sound quite sanguine about politicians' promises.

MA: He's a Bill Clinton-y kind of guy. But there was always a big honorary committee, from the Governor's wife on down. A lot of the support just evaporated; people disappeared with the controversy. Still I'm optimistic.

RA: You're a congenital optimist, aren't you?

MA: In this case there was a huge amount of sentiment from working people. Whether it was talk radio or people constantly coming up to me in Baltimore, where I became known as the Harriet Tubman guy. There was actually more press and support for this than any other project I've worked on. It's indicative of politics, that abyss between the views of working people and their representatives.

RA: I noticed in the press coverage coming out of Maryland that you didn't really play the censorship card very hard. Didn't you feel censored by the Associated Black Charities ahistorical vision of who Tubman was?

MA: Not really. We got the Associated Black Charities to write a letter in support. Many of them actually liked the mural. This was all kicked off by a very inflammatory piece in The Baltimore Sun about a public meeting that was held. The writer portrayed it as if responses to the piece were divided by race, which wasn't the case. When the Associated Black Charities began to attack the mural's imagery I had to respond. When they're on the radio saying it's inappropriate then I certainly have to respond forcefully.

RA: Did your process with them break down during the post-design stage of the project?

MA: Let's say it wasn't presented in the best way possible. I'm trying to be generous here, but the Charities are small potatoes. The fundamental question is why the institutions, the unions, the schools and the city of Baltimore did not step forward to find a site for Harriet. Where were the politicians? Where were the civil rights organizations? The educators who talk about freedom of expression? Many small churches and individuals volunteered their walls, and the Visionary Museum responded with an offer of space for me to complete the portable mural. But most major institutions remained silent.

RA: Has this attracted media attention outside of Maryland?

MA: Oh yes. The Associated Press, the Newark Ledger and, of course, online. The project has raised questions, but not [only] in the traditional places.

RA: What role has the Internet played in the dissemination of this story?

MA: It went out on my own AgitProp News [e-mail] list along with other lists like the Black Radical Congress. The Baltimore Sun has something called "Sun Spot," and people have responded there, too. Online media becomes one of the places you can have a discussion. It raised other, familiar issues, like "Why is a white artist doing this?" It's still a good discussion to have.

RA: Does the Net make this discussion global? Or are people still primarily concerned with local issues?

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

MA: It's definitely global. I received messages from Germany, Mexico and many other locations. People all over the world now know of these events quickly — and help respond.

RA: And your Magnolia Middle School mural is dominated by the image of a computer, isn't it?

MA: It shows Harriet on a video screen, her hands outstretched against a book.

RA: Does your work ever get discussed in commercial, art-world publications like Art in America? Or public-art journals and sites like Forecast? I ask because non-arts people tend to think that there's one art world, when there are really many.

MA: My work has been pretty much ignored by the art press and the official art world. The basis of my work is that images are meant to be used as part of a social struggle. Workers are not simply subjects, but participants in the creation of my work. Perhaps not always directly, as in doing the painting, but through the creation of movements that lay the groundwork for the imagery. There is nothing to sell or profit from.

RA: You must spend a lot of time trying to educate white, middle-class reporters without much of an arts or political perspective.

MA: I happen to believe that journalism — real journalism — is denigrated in much the way art is. The corporate media would like to make all journalism happy-face sound bites. Journalists are like other workers: they have to relearn their better traditions. Talking with the press is time well spent. Reporters can often influence the way articles appear.

RA: Do you have a sense of when the project will be completed?

MA: We hope to find a wall and return to paint it in the spring. If I can't get a wall in Maryland, I will go elsewhere. The working people of this country deserve to have a mural — many murals — about this heroic woman.

Mike Alewitz can be reached at alewitzm@mail.ccsu.edu. To subscribe to AgitProp News, send the message: subscribe agitprop_news [Your Name] to listserv@email.rutgers.edu

— Robert Atkins (robert@mediachannel.org) is MediaChannel's Media Arts Editor and a Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon's STUDIO for Creative Inquiry