Sarah Holtz Interviews Heidi Schmalbach, Arts Advocate

HS: The black football team played one night, and the white high school football team played another night, however on both nights, everyone in the town was there. This became a focus. It was a really important place for this community.

We wondered, how can we use what I would now call a creative placemaking process to bring people back to the space to reimagine what they want it to be, this super important site of memory for many generations? And how can we use creative energy to bring something back?

SH: Heidi then explained how artists from outside Mart Texas engaged the community in making a public art piece.

HS: We took out ads in the newspaper that were an open invitation to come and either participate or just hang out. Eventually we got permission to use the old concession stand at the football field to focus on creating a mosaic mural on the exterior façade of the old football field.

The process was incredible. There is something in my opinion about mosaic work that happens with communities that is super inviting because it’s a long and challenging process but it has a low barrier to entry because you can come in and just do a couple of pieces. In Muhsana Ali's case she invited people to bring pieces of their grandmother’s china that had broken to be included in this mural that is intended to be a reflection of the community over time.

SH: In imagining all the people who came together to create the mural, I was curious how strangers interacted with one another during the creative process.

HS: I think this is where the possibility for use in conflict situations comes in. There was a point in time when I looked around at the people who were participating, cracking jokes with each other.

My boyfriend at the time with sleeve tattoos, me, a very liberal and outspoken feminist next to a woman who has a giant anti-abortion sign on her fence who I would not normally go out of my way to engage in conversation with. There was a pastor from one of the churches, kids, people who would not under any other circumstances be sharing space with each other for that much time let alone being engaged in the same activity. They were just quietly appreciating each other.

We didn’t talk about anything political. We didn’t take the time to discuss our views on abortion or anything else, but it leveled the field in some way. It set a table that invited a lot of people to come and make something together.

It’s indescribable. I still don’t know actually even after pursuing a PhD what happened. I didn’t know how to explain it, but I knew that it was important. I could see how this could help in the chaotic times that we live in. There is something about the process that I’m starting to understand more about.

I would summarize it as uncovering shared values that get muddied up when other things get layered on top of them like talking about political parties. Things can get messy, but there are still things that we can all agree about and they’re core to our value system.

I’ve seen this happen in real life and I think that was one of the best models in my recent memory. But it wasn’t really a model, it was just organic. It didn’t set out to be what it was, but there are definitely lessons there.

SH: I’ve also read that you have described mural-making as democratic. Could you say more about that?

HS: Certainly, like anything, it can and cannot be. Obviously, there are murals that go up all the time that aren’t created in a participatory way and that’s totally fine.

If you have an interest in using a certain form of artmaking to bring people together, mural-making is a good one. There are just so many ways to include a diversity of voices in image-making and defining what the image represents.

This is something that will ultimately take up a lot of visual space, which is important to think about. When you’re making public art, it’s by definition public. Not everything needs to be created with tons of input, but I think it’s best practice for some things, particularly when they’re going to be in neighborhoods, to be part of a democratic process. That in and of itself is an opportunity for dialogue that isn’t the same thing as having a public meeting.

There are almost always opportunities to bring in people with no experience to put paint on a wall and that feels really good. It’s literally empowering. There is a lot of fear involved for people who don’t define themselves as artists in artmaking.
One of my colleagues calls it “art scars” and I think she’s so spot on. At some point, many people in their childhood were made to believe that they weren’t good at art, whether that happened in dance class or in drawing, however it happened, she says that you carry those art scars with you and overcoming that at any age is triumphant. There is a significant individual benefit that happens when you participate in artmaking of any kind, but especially in this case in the creation of a public piece.
Like we’ve already talked about, the collective benefit and community building is so strong. Maybe the upside of art scars is that it puts most people on an even playing field. Just for a minute, it dissolves power imbalances.

Theater practice is a really great space to do that because everyone feels awkward trying to act. There’s just something fun and freeing about going through that together that I have watched. I don’t exactly know how to sustain it for a period of time, but for 30 minutes or so, everyone is on an even playing field and that opens up really important spaces for exploration and maybe peacemaking.

Sarah Holtz Interviews Tsungwei Moo, Visual Artist

TM: In 2017, my ex-boyfriend, he lost his life in gun violence. I was really depressed. I could not do anything for a while until I heard about the Robby Poblete Foundation. They call for artists. They transform California gun buy back weapons. They select eight different artists in the United States and cut off those gun parts from the gun buy-back program and give to artists to create art.

It was really a strange feeling because those weapons, each piece took someone’s life. When I’m holding those pieces, I want to create art to honor those people who passed away because of gun violence. I want to bring awareness to society and relieve my personal grief and issues. Also, I want to cheer people up who have lost their loved ones like me.

SH: Would you like to continue using actual materials like gun parts? Would you like to do that in the future for other kinds of social justice pieces?

TM: Yes, I will keep doing it. It will be a lifetime mission for me. If not for my boyfriend passing away, I would not have done anything about gun violence. Things happen. We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. I have the opportunity, I have the skill to use my art to have some impact, so I need to do that.

For example, my boyfriend was killed in Jamaica. A lot of people in Jamaica feel fear and they cannot go outside from their own house at nighttime. In the future, I want to build some public art in Jamaica to hopefully help reduce gun violence and make public aware or change the gunman’s thought.

SH: I think it also helps start conversations. These are things that a lot of people don’t want to talk about or maybe they don’t know how to talk about it because it’s so sensitive and it’s so political, but art has the power to push that conversation.

TM: Yes, totally.

SH: Do you think that your art has potential to promote peacemaking?

TM: Totally! My first anti-gun violence piece was Home Sweet Home. There was a mom who started crying in front of my painting. She said her son’s life had been taken 25 years ago.

The image is of a father holding a baby. He wants to give the baby the best environment to grow up. The baby growing up needs a father by his side, but in our society, [that doesn’t always happen] because of gun violence taking so many lives. My art is about love, passion and families and humanity binding together.

Surrounding the piece with all the gun parts, it’s being destroyed symbolizing society giving into pressure, but love is something really strong that can connect people. We want to make it stronger and better and make some positive change.

She was crying in front of my painting. Through my art, she felt relief just like when through my creation, I feel relief. She felt it. She is only one symbol. I feel like through my art creation, I can get so many people to realize the issue we have in society.
Also, those guns and weapons from the United States shipping to different countries, hopefully someday I can do some popular art to stop either the gunmen who do the shooting or to stop people for their own benefit from shipping [weapons].
My boyfriend, his life was taken because of robbery. I want to present the individual life as being more important, more valuable than those material possessions. People take each other’s lives just because they want to have some material thing, but they don’t realize that if that person stays alive, he can have so many impacts on society.

The gunman took not just one person’s life, he took his community’s, his whole family’s hope because one individual person could have done so many different things in his future, but they took that opportunity.

Sarah Holtz Interviews graphic novelist Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez

EMR: Ever since I was a child, I was always drawn to narratives around superhero characters.
I grew up in very poverty-stricken communities. By the time I was 18 years old, I had lived in 21 different places. I grew up with a mother who herself was challenged with mental health issues.

We were raised on public assistance and comic book art and books were access for me to stories and visual arts. I would walk the streets of the South Bronx to gather up cans and bottles so that I could exchange them to buy my own comic books.

There was always something that fascinated me about these characters. They always fought for a better world. They always fought for a better reality for all of us, very selfless, sacrificial characters.

This was something that truly gravitated towards me because I saw a lot of injustices growing up, a lot of economic injustices, racial and domestic violence. These were issues that were very clear to me that should not be visible, should not be reality.
Comic books for me were an escapism, but more so they were an affirmation of who I wanted to be as a person, who I wanted to grow up to be.

As a young activist in my early 20s, I would participate as a community organizer working with young people and their families and issues centered around police brutality. I participated in demonstrations and protests and I would always find myself at a comic book shop picking up comics as well. It was just something that truly validated what I believed in. I really believed in equity. I really believed in fighting for social justice.

Sometimes people read fantasy and read science fiction and comic books for escapism. I really looked at it for validation more than anything else.

SH: How did you choose Marisol’s superpowers?

EMR: Marisol’s superpowers come from the Taíno deity of Puerto Rico. Their mythology is centered around a matriarchal order. The supreme being was a mother goddess Atabey and her twin sons Yúcahu and Guacar were representations of the elements.

The word “hurricane” literally comes from the Taino language huracán. Yúcahu was the god of the seas and the mountains.
In creating her powers, I literally looked at these deities in mythology and tied that into her origin story. For Marisol, I wanted to create something that was respective of her and my heritage. Often times it was always overlooked in mainstream media. I wanted to find a way to organically incorporate it even into her origin story. Her powers stem from that.

By having her have powers centered around nature and the elements, it was a natural progress to have her become a hero that also fights for environmental justice and brings awareness around climate change.

SH: Wow, that’s great. How did the series change after Hurricane Maria?

EMR: I had for some time already been aware of what was being reported by various scientists in Puerto Rico and across the world. There is a scientist in Puerto Rico, Dr. José Molinelli Freytes who for years had been saying that Puerto Rico was long overdue to be hit by one of two natural disasters, either a series of earthquakes or a cataclysmic storm that had never been seen before. Given the island’s weakened infrastructure, his fears were that the island would not be able to recover fully from these storms.

Understanding that, I wanted to create a superhero that fell into the same patriarchal storytelling of a male character finding a solution to an issue by knocking people out and knocking people through walls and he wanted to emulate the women that mentored me and the women in my life.

I thought to myself the solution has to present itself organically and it can’t be solved just by a supervillain battle. Therefore, I removed the whole concept of a supervillain from the narrative and had Marisol deal with a natural disaster.

From a storytelling perspective, I actually chose the hurricane over the earthquakes and left it also in a way that she was there to help out, but she didn’t save the island from the hurricane.

That book was published in December of 2016, nine months before Hurricane Maria actually hit Puerto Rico. When Hurricane Maria came to Puerto Rico, I found myself within the comic book industry having the only series that was directly connected to what was happening in Puerto Rico at the time, not just the fact that the character was ethnically Puerto Rican but the face that her origin and story itself took place on the island.

Having had that, I was approached by DC Comics and that conversation developed into a project that will be called The Ricanstruction: Reminiscing and Rebuilding Puerto Rico which was our second book.

That would team up our character, who at the time had not even been published for one year with characters that have been around for 80 years; Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and many others.

This book that was 200 pages helped us raise close to one-quarter million dollars and jump started our philanthropic work. My wife, Kyung Jeon-Miranda started La Borinquena Grants Program.

The character organically found herself to develop into becoming an icon for social justice in the real world, not just by the storylines, but what she was doing in reality. Our work continues to elevate the discourse around Puerto Rico and to really engage people in understanding that for the last 122 years, this island continues to be the world’s oldest colony.

It’s an opportunity to remind us of our humanity, remind us of our collective responsibility for one another. Often times, when you look at social issues affecting our nation, it’s usually poverty-stricken communities that are the hardest hit which overwhelmingly tend to be of people of color.

SH: Can you tell me how Masks for America got started?

EMR: Masks for America was started by a group of activists and organizers from across the United States; Dr. Sanjeev Sriram, Bob Bland who is notable for being one of the founders of the Women’s March but also a fashion designer and Kristin Mink, who is actually a school teacher.

Not only is this an organization of volunteers, working to fundraise to provide resources and PPE, personal protective equipment to healthcare workers on the frontlines across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, but we’re also making sure that we step up and speak out when necessary.

We are looking at this pandemic in different waves, particularly in the South where there are many uninsured families and individuals. This pandemic and this organizations’ efforts to address these issues by providing resources also provides a necessary discourse with a lot of medical professionals. That’s really what the power of Masks for America is. In the space of this pandemic, we are still connected and that connectivity that we have is where we can find our superpowers because it’s really our humanity that is finding its way through this bandwidth, this internet. Our collective work is really making a significant difference in real time.

One of the things I’ve been very aware of is the power that art has in this time that we are self-isolating, self-quarantining, we turn to art whether it’s a novel, a television show, painting, reading comics, whatever it may be, we’re turning to art to distract us, to find hope, to find inspiration. In that space of embracing and looking at art and using art and engaging in art, that is in itself where we can also find healing.

A lot of what we are going through is being affected by this virus that affects us physically, but those of us who are not stricken with the virus are also dealing with psychological issues by being quarantined. This is where art comes in. Art is very helpful for our mental health. It’s transcendental. It’s transformative. That’s really the power of art in a situation like this. Art isn’t simply just for being appreciated on gallery or museum walls. Art is necessary in times of crises because it’s also part of our healing. In that space, we see that there is hope, a cure to keep ourselves healthy and sane.