Photo by Lily Shea
Susan Simensky Bietila
Art as a means of social and political activism has the power to change history. Here in Milwaukee, artist-activist Susan Simensky Bietila has been using media like posters, comics, photography, street puppetry and more to amplify the people’s power for decades. Her artwork has been incorporated into many anti-pipeline, anti-mine and Indigenous rights actions in Wisconsin including those during the Crandon Mine proposal near the Wolf River and Enbridge Line 5 near Lake Superior.
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Simensky Bietila remembers her political awakening while in high school during the Cuban Missile Crisis. She studied art at Brooklyn College under the mentorship of renowned abstract expressionist painter Ad Reinhardt. It was here, during the Free Speech Movement, where Simensky Bietila joined Students For a Democratic Society (SDS).
Simensky Bietila grew up in a community of Jewish refugees who fled genocide in Eastern Europe. “I didn’t know much, but I knew what was wrong,” Simensky Bietila affirms about her upbringing. “The Jewish principle of tikkun olam, which is ‘repair of the world,’ is a call to actively stand against injustice.”
Political Speech
Active during the anti-Vietnam War, anti-nuke and women’s liberation movements of the 1960’s, Simensky Bietila first discovered art being used as political speech upon attending a workshop by Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater. “It planted a seed,” she remembers. “I was drawn to the German expressionists, and I found out that they were in the midst of a revolution. The idea of being an artist in the midst of movements was something I realized pretty early.”
In her early 20s, Simensky Bietila illustrated for left magazines National Guardian and Rat Subterranean News, where she created full-page art covers. She describes this period as one of the happiest times of her life. “The intellectual collaboration around the art was really good,” Simensky Bietila reminisces. “I’ve been looking for that ever since.”
Simensky Bietila then went to nursing school and has worked as a nurse for 45 years. She moved with her family to Milwaukee in 1986. With UW-Milwaukee’s Latin America Solidarity Committee, Simensky Bietila and her husband organized a street theater group of over 40 people, putting on radical community events that included local stilt walkers and large puppets.
Puppets and Stilt Walkers
“The first real puppets I made were equestrian puppets to wrap around a stilt walker to represent the Four Horses of the Apocalypse,” she mentions. “I made them out of plaster and chicken wire. They were quite heavy. It was a learning experience.”
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In recent years, Simensky Bietila has continued to share her creative visions and art builds with social justice groups like Milwaukee Indigenous Resistance Solidarity Network, Milwaukee Riverkeeper and Jewish Voice For Peace. Using recycled materials like cardboard and paper, fish and bird puppets as well as life-sized sturgeon art for water protection events have been just a few of Simensky Bietila’s creations.
She notes, “We’re not making angry things; we’re talking about things we love that are in danger.”
Simensky Bietila remains involved with the radical art collective and publication WW3 Illustrated, which can be picked up at Lion’s Tooth and at the Riverwest Co-Op. “It’s an anthology of drawn stories, and it comes out every year,” she explains about WW3. “It’s like a direct ancestor of graphic non-fiction, and it’s a like-minded group of people. Pieces of the stories have gone on banners and to museums.”
This fall, Simensky Bietila’s work was recently featured in the “Art on the Edge” exhibition about censored local art at Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, displaying her Big Sister is Watching You comic satirizing right-wing political organization Moms for Liberty. Created for the WW3 Illustrated story Elephant Stampede in Milwaukee, the piece was chosen for the Museum of Wisconsin Art-curated show POW-litical at their gallery in Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel.
Slated to run during the Republican National Convention, the show was ultimately censored by the hotel owners, removing Big Sister on opening night. “They replaced the piece with my story about Foxconn, which to me was poetic justice because that points the finger at the Republicans in an even sharper way,” Simensky Bietila contends.
“The role of art as political speech has come out from obscurity during McCarthyite repression to the forefront,” she concludes. “Activist artists are already in community, and innovation will continue. We will use metaphors when it is dangerous to speak directly. The upcoming chaos in the U.S. will encourage many people to cross the threshold and get involved in a way they never have before. I’m going to keep standing up, and so will lots of people I know.”
Visit Susan Simensky Bietila’s website: art-as-activism.blogspot.com.
