A Life on the Front Lines: Susan Simensky Bietila’s Life of Resistance

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'Front Lines: a lifetime of drawing resistance' by Susan Simensky Bietila

Protest movements in the United States are often ephemeral. On the one hand, this is because of the reactive nature of such movements; a crisis arises that needs to be immediately dealt with, and a response is quickly cultivated. Inevitably though, that crisis recedes and people go on with their lives. At the same time, one cannot underestimate the role of the state in the often-transitory nature of American protest movements. The monopoly on legitimate violence enjoyed by the state often ends such movements before they can become permanent.

Both of these outcomes make the documentation of protest movements difficult, a reality that makes Milwaukee resident Susan Simensky Bietila’s recent book Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance (PM Press) all the more vital. A vibrant mash-up of memoir, art and activism, Front Lines positions Simensky Bietila on the “front lines” of the most important political movements of the past 60 years. What emerges from Simensky Bietila’s extraordinary life as both artist and activist is a story of continuity, one in which the vague concept of “intersectionality” is given much-needed specificity. By documenting Simensky Bietila’s multi-decade engagement with the political left, Front Lines provides a useful counter-narrative to the rise of conservatism in the United States throughout the late-20th century.

The Shepherd Express recently sat down with Simensky Bietila to talk about Front Lines and the life that inspired the book:

As the book notes, you became an artist at an incredibly young while growing up in Brooklyn. What was art doing for you as a child?

“When I do art … even when I was a child, it’s like completely absorbing. It’s a kind of visual play. And you look up and it’s five hours later. It’s a different type of brain activity all in itself.”

You grew up in New York during the mid-20th century, at a time when the city was still investing heavily in its public infrastructure. What was it like growing up in New York at that time?

“I grew up in the projects all the way at the end of the city. It was really good growing up in the projects then because there were so many kids to play with. You could walk to school; you could walk to the store. It was a walkable neighborhood. I went to an after-school center that was run by people close to the civil rights movement. All the teachers were either Black folks from the South or from the Caribbean. So I was exposed to different cultures, as the emphasis was on a multicultural approach.”

Were people in your neighborhood political at that time as well?

“Growing up where I did, political activism and the history of resistance to oppression was inbred. I didn’t become radical until college, despite having ideas that were far to the left of the mainstream. It was when I went to college and learned about the Vietnam War and many other things.”

After that moment of awakening, you start to do art for such countercultural publications as the Guardian and the RAT newspapers. How were you thinking about creating an aesthetic for the movement at that time?

“I was looking back to [German artists] John Heartfield and George Grosz. I loved John Heartfield’s humor and just the directness of it. John Heartfield and [German Dada artist] Hannah Höch were responsible for the way I went about doing the covers for The Guardian ... So I had the sense to reach out to figure out how art and politics could connect.”

By the 1970s you are working as labor and delivery nurse in Baltimore. How did that experience shape you?

“Number one, working as a nurse kept you from being in the ivory tower. You were acutely aware of what life was like for all these different sectors of the population. I was the anchor for people when they were going through labor. It was a time when they didn’t let lots of relatives in at all. And so people would say, ‘You should be a teacher, because you’re teaching me how my body works. And you’re guiding me through this.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I am a teacher. I’m you’re teacher.’”

With this idea of care in mind, much of your recent work has focused on the topic of environmentalism, along with campaigns against mining efforts on indigenous land in Wisconsin, including on the Wolf River in Crandon. What drew you to these issues?

“I just always loved leaving the city and I was always interested in the natural world. But it all really didn’t connect until I was invited into the ‘No Mining’ stuff.  And then it began to build, layer upon layer, thanks to the people who were doing the teaching—native and non-native—around the Crandon mine. I was just continuing to learn about our relationship with the planet and with water.

Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance is available directly through PM Press: Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance

An exhibition highlighting works featured in Front Lines is on display at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts through June 26.