A teacher's challenge, Whittier kids' dream, a muralist's
guidance and residents' paintbrushes help Meldrum Park reflect city's heritage
by Lori Walsh
August 10, 2013
reposted from the Argus Leader
Meldrum Park eases into darkness. Color fades from view, and
the grass, the trees, the people all soften into shades of charcoal and shadow
as they cut and flow through the dusk. Muralist Dave Loewenstein perches his
laptop on a plain white table. An image illuminates the night, projecting onto
the 150-foot blank wall that stretches across the park itself. Figures and
shapes appear outlined in bold black line like a child’s coloring book: a
basketball hoop, a girl in a knit hat, a pair of hands grasping another pair of
hands, lifting, perhaps, though it’s hard to say which hands might be the
helpers and which the helped.
Rhythms of a basketball slap the silence, but the players
only check the artists with the occasional sidelong glance. Loewenstein and his
team — mural assistant Ashley Jane Laird, apprentice Nate Buchholz and
documentarian Nicholas Ward — are beginning a design transfer, where the
original design for the mural is outlined onto the wall. To Loewenstein, the
basketball players nearby are collaborators. “Make sure they know what we’re
here for,” he murmurs. “Make sure they know when it’s their time to paint.”
Design transfer can be intense in its precision. The image
must somehow line up perfectly against its imperfect landscape. Mosquitoes and
other unseeable things that bite are shaken loose from their grassy resting
places to clip at ankles. The hour is late. The park is dark. Hardly anyone is
watching. Finally, Loewenstein is satisfied with the position of the design.
The first stroke of paint is swiped onto the wall without fanfare, the
peach-colored hue imperceptible in the absence of light. The team will work
throughout the night. Long after the basketball players have rolled home, long
after the neighborhood has settled into rest, the artists will still be
advancing new sections of design along the wall, repositioning carefully each
time the projection shifts.
Loewenstein has just arrived from a distant town and a
distant mural. What is it like to celebrate a completed mural in the sunshine
and then, a few days later, start again in the dark with fresh canvas and fresh
paint? It’s the ultimate blank page, this enormous wall. It feels inviting and
intimidating at the same time. “It’s all one wall to me,” Loewenstein tells me
without averting his eyes from the design. I can’t decide if he is joking or
being appropriately philosophical. Maybe a little of both. One wall, stretching across decades, connecting cities and
citizens and artists who have never met.
He doesn’t have much time to talk; he is focused on the task
at hand. I leave the night to the artists and drive through the Whittier
neighborhood, turning down the dimly lit streets where I once lived — past the
St. Francis House, looping around Whittier Middle School, beyond the empty lot
where the old gray church used to stand long after it had been transformed into
a residence (though wayward strangers knocked on the door seeking salvation all
the same). Manna Bakery, the old Flower Box, both asleep. All is quiet, save
the crickets. And I am reminded: This is not where the story of the Meldrum
Park mural begins.
This began ... in a
classroom
Now that I think of it, it’s hard to say where exactly this
story should start. (With the Contemporary Mural Movement of the 1960s? With 20
million immigrants flowing through Ellis Island?) For our purposes, let’s begin
in teacher Lela Himmerich’s social studies classroom at Whittier Middle School
in 2011.
It was spring, and Himmerich was taking her eighth grade
class outside for some project-based learning. Her essential question: What is
needed to keep the Whittier neighborhood vital? The students walked around the
neighborhood with their teacher, who invited them to see things with “a whole
new set of eyes.” Some of the students had been getting off the bus for three
years at the middle school but had never taken the time to walk around and see
more than the footprint the school inhabits. Soon, every team was popping with
ideas about what could be done in the neighborhood, and they prepared to share
those ideas with an audience of community decision makers, including Sioux
Falls Mayor Mike Huether.
 |
| Students from Lela Himmerich's class present their neighborhood revitalization plan. |
“They really wanted their ideas to happen,” Himmerich
remembers. “The kids were super nervous. I told them, ‘Your ideas are amazing.
You are amazing. You are ready for this. Let it shine.’ Then I just kept
crossing my fingers that something would happen.” The ideas the students
initiated were varied. They wanted to help paint the Manna Bakery, an authentic
Mexican bakery and popular after-school stop for students. They thought the old
fire station at Heritage Park could be transformed into a local history museum
for firefighters. They wanted to see a mural inside Whittier Middle School and
a larger mural on the blank, oft-graffiti-tagged wall that dominates Meldrum Park.
Everyone agreed the presentations were excellent. And then —
not much happened. The mayor went back to his office. The students went back to
class. But this isn’t where the story ends. Gigi Rieder, president of the
Whittier Residents Association, had spent some time in San Antonio, where she
was inspired by a six-story mural of the Virgin Mary painted on the external
wall of a hospital. “There was art everywhere in San Antonio,” she explains.
“It really made you say, ‘Wow.’ ” Which got her thinking about that ugly wall near her house
by Meldrum Park.
Suddenly, the wall didn’t look so ugly any more. At least
not in her imagination. And then there was Nan Baker, of the Sioux Falls Arts
Council, who knew how to make things happen through grant-writing, who also
knew what the kids at Whittier had been up to, who connected with Rieder and
Himmerich, and who didn’t give up, even when the first Arts Council request for
funds was denied by the United Way.
Enter muralist Dave Loewenstein — or at least a photograph
of muralist Dave Loewenstein, which Baker came across right before she
initiated a request for a prestigious “Our Town” grant through the National
Endowment for the Arts. Are you following all of this? It’s called grass-roots
community development. It’s not as common as it should be.
Fast-forward for a moment, a year or two from the
grant-writing phase, to comments Loewenstein will make at the mural
celebration: “This began at Whittier Middle School in a classroom with a
teacher, Lela Himmerich, who had the foresight to teach not just the ABCs and
the 123s, but to open her students up to what was right around them in their
neighborhood, engaging them with real life and then not stopping when the class
project was over, but taking it to the next logical level. Take it to the
people who make decisions. What that means is, we need to pay a lot more
attention to our teachers and our students in the public schools. They have
great ideas that we need to follow through on.”
In case you were wondering, the outside of the Manna Bakery
has already been painted. The students saw to that, too. And a mural inside
Whittier Middle School is in the works. Look for it next year. As for the
firefighter museum in Heritage Park ... anything is possible when the kids at
Whittier put their minds to it.
Ellis Island of the
Plains
The design team meetings begin in the darkness of winter.
Loewenstein has been secured as lead artist for the Meldrum Park mural, and the
process of engaging the community has begun. In other words, the wall will be
painted, but what will be painted on it? What sort of story do we want to share
with the neighborhood, the city, the world? Loewenstein isn’t telling us, he’s
asking us. My daughter has been chosen as one of the Whittier student artists,
and so I drive her to the first design team meeting, not sure what is ahead.
 |
| Presentation about the mural project at the Sioux Falls Public Library. |
We meet Loewenstein at the Museum of Visual Materials, where
he introduces a gathering of local residents to the concept of public art. Who
will see this mural? Christians. Muslims. Police officers. People who don’t
want police officers to know what they are doing. Students. Babies.
Grandparents. Basketball players. People who only drive by but would never
dream of stopping. People who plant themselves by the wall and study it for
hours. People who don’t speak English and don’t yet have the language to
describe the cold of a South Dakota January. People whose ancestors have lived
here since before memory. In a word, everyone.
Who sees a painting in an art museum? Well, that depends.
And sometimes, even in Sioux Falls, it depends on who has the money to pay the
admission price. We attend as many design meetings as we can, where we are
invited to think, to talk, to draw out the ideas of our imaginations and those
of others. My daughter is paired up at one point with a woman whose English is
accented, and I can see from across the room that both are struggling with
communication. But then the markers come out and they draw. The woman wants the
park to have a fence so her children won’t run into the street. My daughter
wants the mural to have vibrant colors and playful imagery, so people can dance
in joy. They each draw their visions, and then they understand.
Loewenstein tells us that Sioux Falls has been referred to
as the Ellis Island of the Plains. At home that night, my daughter sketches the
Statue of Liberty reaching out to swaying fields of native grasslands. She
gives her drawing to Loewenstein, who accepts it as he does every other idea
the design team offers — openly and with gratitude. At some point, it does
occur to me that everyone in Sioux Falls might not love this mural. Not because
there is anything wrong with it. Just because that’s the way people are.
A quote favored by Loewenstein (from Gwendolyn Brooks)
comforts me:
“Does Man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms. Art hurts.
Art urges voyages — and it is easier to stay at home, the nice beer ready.”
I grew up in this neighborhood. My brother still lives here,
in the house where I once lived, too. This is our place, and we know the colors
and textures of it firsthand. When we see the final mural design, it does not
make me squirm. It makes me want to spin around in celebration. Could people
criticize what we are doing? Probably. In my experience, it is more likely they
will discount it, marginalize it, overlook it. That’s just one of the things
you learn growing up in this part of town. People have a tendency to
underestimate you.
 |
| Design Team members present to the Visual Arts Commission. |
This is a small
village
Finally, after approval from a variety of city officials,
paint can go on the wall. Community painting weekend arrives. This is when we
leave the relative cocoon of design team meetings and bump brushes with a whole
lot of people we’ve never met before, because everyone is invited to paint. And
everyone does.
Iman Mahgoub often comes to Meldrum Park with her friends to
drink coffee and let the children play. She used to live in a place where she
was scared. But here, her children are safe. She and her daughter served on the
design team. “This is a small village,” she says of the Whittier neighborhood.
“People help show you where to go. It’s good for the kids. They aren’t in
danger.” Akoat Mater swishes some yellow on the wall in the place where the
artists have guided her. This is new for her, but her brush strokes are bold
and sure. “Sometimes I color with my kids, but I’ve never painted like this
before.”
At one point, I return from my car to find my daughter at
the far end of the wall, painting next to a man I’ve never seen before, and my
stomach tightens. Why would they paint so close together? She doesn’t know him.
Isn’t Loewenstein paying attention? He could have placed them farther apart so
they could paint in peace. And then I get it. They are painting in peace. They work
around one another with respect and laughter. When they are done she comes
skipping down the hill to tell me about her new friend. She couldn’t understand
when he told her where he was originally from, but he owns a shop where he cuts
hair. Maybe we could all get our haircuts from him someday?
Loewenstein understands all this. He plans it, I see now. He
plants people right next to one another as they paint so they can begin to grow
across the expanse of culture and language and life experience. They drip paint
on one another, and they laugh about it. He knows there will be people who have
never held a brush before and may never again. He knows that every time they
pass by they will remember where they stood and what color they used and who
stood next to them as they made their collective mark.
Kim Avilarivas has just painted part of a hand. As soon as I
ask her about painting, she starts talking about Whittier Middle School. “People
think it’s not safe or that there’s not a lot of people who care about you, but
that’s not true at all,” she says. “We’re spirited and talented. We care about
our community. We make it better. Art is a way to express how you feel. This
mural expresses how we feel about our community. It feels like finally your
voice was heard in the city of Sioux Falls.” Avilarivas is 13 years old, and, like most kids who grow up
in this neighborhood, she feels the weight of judgment from those who grow up
somewhere else. I’m not sure she’s any worse for that knowledge. It seems to me
she’s plenty happy to prove them wrong.
I go home at the end of the day with paint on my hands. The
paint is the color of skin but not the color of my skin. I can’t bear to wash
it off.
Look, and keep
looking
At some point, it occurs to all of us that Dave Loewenstein
and Ashley Jane Laird aren’t actually from around here. In other words: Pretty
soon, they have to leave. There’s no getting around it. “We are completely aware this
is about much more than making a mural together or beautifying a neighborhood,”
Loewenstein says. “This is about re-engaging the people with the neighborhood,
encouraging people to have a new experience with the way they live — an
experience that can compete with what we’re taught culturally, by the media, by
our families.”
I spent two hours talking with Loewenstein on a day when
painting had been rained out. I have pages of notes and quotes that I didn’t
include here. In the end, I don’t think the muralist would have wanted this to
be a piece about him, even though much of Sioux Falls may never fully realize
just how significant he is on the national scene. He taught us that early on,
now that I think about it. I’ve stood in front of a Monet painting and a van
Gogh, among others. They were worth millions of dollars. Art reaches the
pinnacle of financial clout when it can be picked up and moved, cordoned off.
When it can change hands. When it can be protected from elements and from the
fingerprints and flashbulbs of its admirers. When you can peer as closely as
the security guard will allow and imagine the story of a life in the signature
of pigment and brush stroke.
Loewenstein’s work holds the brush strokes of a community —
hundreds of people. It’s a collage, a celebration, a mirror. It isn’t worth a
penny, to some. And yet, it’s worth more than that Monet all the same, isn’t
it? The artist spoke at the mural dedication: “Most of us, I imagine, look up
trying to decode the matrix of symbols and patterns, wondering what they mean,
what was intended by the artists, and should we be proud ... or offended? Good.
Look, and keep looking. Ask questions.”
There is talk of hosting a story time in front of the wall,
or an exercise class. Certainly the women of the neighborhood will be there
still, coffee in hand, children dashing about their feet in a colorful blur.
The basketball players have played ball throughout the transformation of
neighborhood and neighbor, and they will continue as well, though more than a
few now have flecks of paint on their shoes. My daughter has a new basketball
of her own. You’ll see us there, shooting and missing, shooting and swishing.
There is a sense, a palpable sense, that the people around
here may never look at a blank wall the same way again. They may never look at
their neighbors the same way again. They may never look at their own hands the
same way again.
Because this isn’t where the story ends.
This, perhaps, is where the story begins.
Written by Lori Walsh for the Argus Leader
Link to Walsh's video for this story here.
