Working class artists

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I want to urge New Yorkers on the list to check out a left-wing art show at
the Puffin Gallery on 435 Broome Street.

One of the artists is list member Mike Alewitz, who is one of America's
most respected muralists. There are a number of photographic reproductions
of his work on display, including a wonderful "Unionism without Borders"
that he has agreed to let us use for the home page of the revamped Marxism
list web currently under construction. Mike works with the Labor Artists
Mural Project out of Rutgers University, whose web page is at
http://www.igc.org/laborart/index.html.

Mike had a rather bitter experience with the American SWP in the 1980s. He
was the creator of the famous mural on the walls of SWP headquarters on
West Street, near the Hudson River, which gained wide recognition in the
mainstream press, and which is depicted at the show. When--as so many of
us--Mike found himself on the wrong side of the SWP leadership, he was
unceremoniously booted. The SWP tops, who knew even less about art than
they do about politics, started issuing him artistic directives such as the
size of Carlos Fonseca's head, etc. When Alewitz, a non-nonsense working
class kid from Cleveland, told them where to get off, they threw him out.
He, like me, went on to bigger and better things.

Another featured artist was Tony "The Bricklayer" Perniciaro, a
working-class Sicilian-American who appears to be in his seventies. His
work consists of poems and water colors that depict the life of
working-class Americans, including the construction workers and bricklayers
he knew all his life.

Here is a sample of his poetry:


brickies
with sweated shirts
topping out a luxury flat?
foreman yelling down the shaft?
"hey, you clam diggers,
shoot up some more stones
till we reach the sky."

---

a bricklayer
a brick stack
a loaded mortar tub

the brickie
picks and dips
like a crazy woodpecker
stealing glances
at the granite sky

with rhythm
goes into his sundance ?
flips them in
one at a time
like his Sumerian brothers
before him

---

from the basement
to the rooftop
building
with rushing light
with blood
on our hands

===

Examples of Tony's paintings:

"the poor always found fly paper more useful than the declaration of
independence":
http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/bricklayer1.jpg

"who can see further a professor or an indian"
http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/bricklayer2.jpg


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)