A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice

by Nicolas Lampert

  Damon moved forward, brought together twenty artists from China, Tibet, and the United States, and staged twenty-five projects during a two-week series of public artworks and performances on the banks of the Fu- Nan.

  Kristin Caskey, an artist from the United States, organized a performance with six women from the community called Washing Silk.

  Thirty years earlier, the Fu-Nan was a place where people could wash their silk in the river and it would come out brighter. This was no longer the case. In the performance, the women came down to the banks of the river and washed red rugs and baskets of silk. In a short time, the silk turned gray, and if the women stayed too long in the water, boils would begin to appear on their legs.

  Kristin Caskey, Washing Silk, performance series on the banks of the Fu-Nan River, 1995 (Betsy Damon)

  Another artist did an installation where water was gathered from the river and frozen into large blocks of ice. Next, the blocks of ice were stacked into a rectangle, roughly six by four by six feet, and placed on a sidewalk that looked down toward the river. The public was invited to wash the ice with brushes—metaphorically cleaning the Fu-Nan through collective action. The blocks of frozen river water slowly melted over the course of the three days, resulting in three days of intense public dialogue.

  A different sidewalk installation involved an artist who placed black-and-white photographs—portraits of people’s faces—on white cafeteria trays that had a thin layer of river water on top. Over time, the water ate away at the paper, symbolizing the harm that filthy water has on human health. The artist also set up a stand to sell the river water in plastic bottles and invited the public to sign a petition. In this case, the artist directly merged public art with the call for political action.

  Other installations took place on the river itself. One artist positioned a cable that ran across the river from one side of the bank to the other. Attached were brooms that hung just high enough as to touch the river’s surface as it rushed past. Seen from a distance, the brooms looked as if they were sweeping the river clean, washing the pollution away.

  Unknown artist, performance series on the banks of the Fu-Nan River, 1995 (Betsy Damon)

  Another artist chose to hang signs with text about the water quality around the necks of ducks. The ducks were then set loose into the river, where they proceeded to die.

  All of these performances and installations were broadcast on state-run television. This, in turn, increased the dialogue between the artists and the public, a dialogue that led to a larger project.

  A New Sculpture

  Government officials in Chengdu responded favorably. They were impressed with the energy and the spirit of the performances and began to reconsider their approach to tackling polluted rivers with dams, floodwalls, and wastewater treatment centers. Zhang Ji Hai, the city’s Funan River Comprehensive Revitalization Project director, listened to Damon’s idea that the introduction of wetlands would educate the public on how to better care for the environment. Zhang agreed, and invited Damon to build her first living-water garden in their city.

  Remarkably, Zhang risked his very freedom to move the project ahead. The Chinese premier opposed the park, and the mayor of Chengdu was not willing to go to jail if the project failed. Zhang was. He offered Damon a six-acre site on the banks of the river and a budget of $2.5 million to build the park.

  Aerial view of the Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 1998 (Betsy Damon)

  Collaboration was the theme. Damon worked with a team of hydrologists, scientists, engineers, landscape architects, and government officials.

  In 1996, she returned to Chengdu with Margie Ruddick, a landscape architect from Philadelphia, and began designing. The land was serendipitously shaped like a fish, and the river water was designed to pass metaphorically through the creature.

  Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 1998 (Betsy Damon)

  The concept was to divert water from the river, let it flow through and be filtered by a series of wetlands, and then return back to the river. Most significantly, the design allowed the residents of Chengdu to visualize the process in a public setting: a park that would serve as a place for education, enjoyment, nature—a place where plants, insects, fish, wildlife, and people would flourish.

  Water guided the design. After being pumped uphill from the river, the water entered the park and into the first settling pond—the eye of the fish. In the middle of the pond, Damon designed a thirteen-foot-tall sculpture, a water droplet made out of green granite that served as a fountain. The water then passed through a series of “flow forms.” These shapes, made of stones, encourage water to move laterally, to breathe, to move as water does in the mountains. Too often, people reconstruct nature and straighten rivers, dam rivers, prohibit the flow of water—all of which harms the integrity of the water molecule. After the flow-forms stage, the water enters into a series of wetlands—a dozen ponds where plants and fish further clean the water—and then into an amphitheater and splash ponds for children. Finally, it returns to the river, with a level of purity that meets the Chinese Category 3 environmental-quality standard for surface water.

  Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 1998 (Betsy Damon)

  Soon after the park opened in April 1998, the Living Water Garden became the most popular park destination in the city. Residents of the crowded city could find refuge in nature, engage with the river at a series of terraces that allowed people to walk down to the water’s edge—a unique feature, considering that large concrete floodwalls make the rest of the river inaccessible. Children discovered new worlds at the park.

  Mary Padua writes

  In almost every part of the park, children can be found kneeling or lying next to the stream and ponds trying to get a close look at water-borne insects and fish. This type of curiosity is a universal feature of childhood, but children in congested Chinese cities have few places like the Living Water Garden where they can satisfy a desire to learn about nature firsthand.5

  Important to understanding the science of the living-water garden is that the diversion of river water through the six-acre park did not, and could not, clean the entire river. Padua notes

  Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 1998 (Betsy Damon)

  major improvements in a body of water the size of the Fu-Nan can be achieved only by reducing emissions of pollution. Instead, the impact of the Living Water Garden lies in its effects on the thinking of the people of Chengdu: their increased awareness of environmental issues and pride in the progress the city has made toward improvement of the river.6

  Zhang echoes this sentiment. He noted that the Living Water Garden encourages “people to look at the world more carefully, to value each creek, river, and groundwater aquifer.”7

  This is the true essence of the project. The park provides a symbolic space, a public space that teaches the community how to care for nature. It directly challenges the notion that industrial systems can solve environmental problems and asks everyone to become a better steward of the environment.

  Zhang had risked his own freedom when he approved the project. His fortitude was honored when the project was widely praised, including praise from the Chinese premier, who commended the park after visiting the site.

  Damon received an honorary citizenship to the city of Chengdu, and the project won numerous international design awards. All the while, Damon is quick to point out that the Living Water Garden was a collaborative project, one that was born out of a long process that included the performances and installations, and a diverse collaborative team who envisioned and built the park. She explains, “The park is not mine. That is a really important truth. We did it together.”8

  Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 1998 (Betsy Damon)

  She adds:

  The Chengdu project is an extension of my philosophy of what it takes to live on the planet, the necessity of working together, bringing together unlikely partners, and forming new relationships. It is about building new kinds of connecti
ons and relationships while grappling with the consequences of a globalized class system and the economics of dominance, possession, exploitation, and greed.9

  The project inspires future reclamation projects elsewhere, and future conversations about water. Damon asserts that water has to be the first consideration when building.

  How are you going to catch the water? Where is it going to go? How are you going to filter it? Everything should be designed like that. Water is the foundation of life. It should be the foundation of design.10

  Damon asks artists to create change, not simply to make more objects. “We need a new sculpture—we need a new language that describes the physical universe that we’ve come to understand from ancient times to now and a future language about preservation.”11 In the process, she utilizes art to engage the public to work toward solutions. “What can artists do?” Damon asks. “We can generate hope, possibility, and conversation.”12 This in turn leads to collaboration.

  Artists must take a central role in helping people who do not traditionally work together find a common ground. Artists can help communicate scientific information to communities by finding a visual language. A public language does not mean that brilliance, excellence, and innovation are lost. Rather, the artist can help to create new patterns of thinking and infuse groups with the enthusiasm and common vision that are needed to break through the barriers.13

  Aerial view of the Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China, 2007 (Betsy Damon)

  The Living Water Garden, along with the performances and the public installations, achieved a breakthrough and led to tangible results. Mary Padua writes:

  This unusual collaboration may be what is most important about the Living Water Garden. Environmental problems no longer are bounded by nationality or place, and constructive responses demand collaborations across national and professional frontiers.14

  Damon, through example, champions artists to take a lead role in solving environmental problems. She asserts that artists, with their creativity, talents, communication skills, and ability to collaborate, are ideally suited to help redesign communities around ecology, public participation, and sustainability. She inspires artists to become activists.

  Judith F. Baca, Danzas Indigenas, Baldwin Park Metrolink Station, circa 2005 (Social and Public Art Resource Center)

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  Art Defends Art

  “The work is not a work of a lone artist working without relationship to the community, but rather a representation of community sensibilities and sentiment of the time.”

  —Judith F. Baca1

  JUDITH F. BACA’S PUBLIC ART projects are always participatory, from her famous Great Wall of Los Angeles to her lesser-known works. Her murals and monuments belong to the community, for the community takes an active role in creating them. To Baca, public art is exactly as it sounds: art that is about, created by and belonging to the public. At the same time, her work is never designed to be safe or sanitized. Rather it addresses the complexities and multiplicities of voices in a community and their history. This was the case with Danzas Indigenas.

  Baca’s Danzas Indigenas is located at the Baldwin Park Metrolink station, twenty miles from downtown Los Angeles, and was installed in 1993. It stood without incident until 2005, when controversy was thrust upon it from outside the community. In 2005, Save Our State (SOS), an extreme anti-immigrant group (formed in 2004 and based out of Ventura County—eighty miles northwest of Baldwin Park), asserted that the monument was seditious. As “evidence,” they relied upon two quotes out of many that were written on the side of Baca’s monument.

  Save Our State demanded that the city remove the text and, if they did not, SOS would take matters into their own hands, which they did. They staged two demonstrations in Baldwin Park, one in May 2005, the other in June 2005. Not willing to back down, Baca, the city government, and the community fought back. What unfolded was an incredible series of nonviolent resistance and creative protests, a struggle where a community defended their monument, an artist became a leader, and a community told a hate group that they were not welcome in their city.

  Danzas Indigenas

  In the early 1990s, Baca received a $56,000 commission to produce a public artwork at the Baldwin Park Commuter Rail Station that reflected the history of the region, ranging from the effect that Spanish missions had on indigenous peoples to how the present-day city of Baldwin Park had grown to become a multiethnic community. The project contained two central elements: a train platform and a monument situated in a plaza. The four-hundred-foot train platform contained written phrases on the ground in indigenous languages that acted as voices coming up from the earth. In the plaza near the metro station, Baca constructed a twenty-foot-tall mission arch that referenced the site’s proximity to the mission of San Gabriel. Baca writes, “Its intention was to become a site of public memory for the people of Baldwin Park; to make visible their invisible history.”2

  On the arch itself were quotes from the community, quotes that were far from controversial and ones that represented a multiplicity of voices: “The kind of community that people dream of—rich and poor, brown, yellow, red, white, all living together”; “Use your brain before you make up your mind”; and “a small town feeling.”

  Also included were two quotes that proved to be more contentious. One quote was from a fragment of a poem by the acclaimed Chicana feminist author Gloria Anzaldúa: “This land was Mexican once, was Indian always, and is, and will be again.” Baca explains, “I chose this quote because . . . descendants of the Gabrielinos still live in the region, making Anzaldúa’s text particularly relevant to the increasing indigenous population.”3 Also included was the quote, “It was better before they came,” which Baca intended to be ambiguous:

  About which “they” is the anonymous voice speaking? The statement was made by an Anglo local resident who was speaking about Mexicans. The ambiguity of the statement was the point, and is designed to say more about the reader than the speaker—and so it has.4

  The “reader” in this case was Save Our State; it highlighted these two quotes, decontextualized them from the rest of the public artwork, and claimed that the monument was seditious and “evidence” that a reconquista movement was attempting to return the land to Mexico. Joseph Turner, the twenty-eight-year-old spokesperson for the group, argued that

  the monument in Baldwin Park is not just a rock. It is a disgusting testament to how pathetically apathetic Americans have grown in response to the hostile takeover attempt by the Mechistas and the massive illegal alien invasion. It is a slap in the face to all Americans and an insult to us all. We have a patriotic obligation to ensure that the seditious language on that monument is removed. And one way or another, it will be removed. Together, we will drive a stake through the heart of the “reconquista” movement.5

  Turner’s violent and racist language was central to SOS and their tactics. The SOS website read:

  Americans are tired of the unchecked third world invasion of illegal aliens . . . They are tired of watching their great American culture disappear, only to watch it be replaced by other cultures that are inferior and contradictory to everything this country was built upon . . . We are seething with anger and boiling with rage. And we are motivated and determined to fight back. This is our land. This is our fight. And we are willing to bleed to defend it.6

  On May 14, 2005, SOS brought their rage to Baldwin Park. Approximately twenty members of the group picketed a busy street intersection, where they were met by nearly a thousand counterdemonstrators. A police line stood between the two sides to ensure that the tense situation did not descend into a full-scale riot. Police also guarded Baca’s monument from the threats that SOS would tear it down if the quotes they objected to were not removed.

  Video footage of the event demonstrates just how ugly the situation became.7 A woman with SOS was caught on tape calling a Latino man a “mongrel”. Another woman with SOS shouted at the counterdemonstrators, “You go back to Mexico!
We’re home! This is our land! This is not your land!” Counterdemonstrators mainly shouted “Racists, go home!” One person in the crowd hurled a water bottle that hit an SOS supporter in the head, sending her to the hospital for observation. No other injuries took place and no arrests were reported.

  Danzas Indigenas protected by police, Baldwin Park Metrolink station, 2005 (Social and Public Art Resource Center)

  The heavy police presence was part of SOS’s strategy to force the city government to meet its demands. The single demonstration cost the city of Baldwin Park $250,000 in police overtime and helicopters to protect SOS’s right to protest. Turner bluntly stated, “Our aim is to make this painful. We want this to become expensive so that people will take notice.”8 He added, “I don’t think the city can withstand that financial [burden], if we go back repeatedly.”9 In short, SOS was trying to bankrupt the city.

  Following the demonstration, Baca and city council members received violent threats through websites, blogs, e-mails, and letters. All of the members of the Baldwin Park City Council received death threats, and Bill Van Cleave, the only white person on the city council, received a message that “they were going to bury me in brown soil.”10 Baca received numerous death threats, and was advised by the FBI to have a bodyguard and to temporarily leave the country. Baca rejected this advice; she refused to be intimidated and refused to back down to a hate group.

  “Baldwin Park has never, ever in its history seen anything like this,” stated Mayor Manuel Lozano. “The residents want these outsiders out of our city.”11 And councilman Bill Van Cleave added, “There is no race problem in Baldwin Park,” but SOS “was bringing one.”12