Episode 30: Susan Hill - The Path Made by Walking Forward

Change the Story / Change the World

English - August 09, 2021 14:00 - 38 minutes - 69.9 MB
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Previous Episode: Episode 29: Becky Reardon - Finding the Moon

Next Episode: Episode 31: Joe Lambert - Making Good Stories that Help Us

Susan Hill: The Path Made by Walking ForwardSusan Hill has, one of the best minds, and hearts I know for translating human creativity to the needs of the human community. In our conversation, we talk about how that complex alchemy works, and doesn’t, getting the respect of people who really distrust you, and what happens when the lights go off in a high-security prison classroom. Here is her bio followed by our full transcript.

Susan Hill: I’m an eccentric combination of very small towns in New England, and very very large, diverse, multi-lingual cities: living by the ocean is the constant. My relatives include a clipper ship navigator, a detective, excellent carpenters, a race horse trainer, a car salesman, a dressmaker, an artist who changed / Americanized her name, nurses and teachers and wonderful cooks. I love the risks, the service, and the high craft implicit in their lives.

I went to college (1961-1965) , not to art school … but fell in love with photography in college, learned to develop film and to print images by apprenticing, began photographing people and neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles .. walking everywhere, photographing. This is how I began … an immersion in seeing a city, in fact, documenting what I saw … but as witness, documentarian, not an agent. I was looking for a different way of working, and went to a lecture by (then, young) Judy Chicago (1975) , who spoke about a new project she was beginning, a project she needed people to work with her. The Project was The Dinner Party. I was one of the first people who entered her studio to work; our early conversations, and the skills I’d learned from my grandmother, led to our deciding to add embroidered panels to each place setting, my being responsible for the embroidery, for the teams of stitchers, we trained.The studio environment, the collaborations, the engagement with direct social action, changed everything.After The Dinner Party was complete, I worked with Judy Baca, founder of SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) during the design and painting of the last segment of The Great Wall mural … a brilliant and generous mentor, deepening my love of collaboration and community engagement. (NOTE: Judy is now embarking on one more segment of the Wall.) At the same time, Susan Loewenberg, founder of L.A. Theatre Works, was Director of Artists in Prison and Other Places; she hired me as an artist in residence for California Institution for Women, responsible for creating a fiber arts project with the inmates that would be given public exhibitions. It became a two-year residency called When Prison is Home, creating quilted triptych banners documenting life with family, life within prison, circled by aspirations, worked by inmates, and free women who came to project sessions in the prison as team members. Most of the inmates we worked with had long sentences or life sentences; were considered respected elders of the prison community, had power, were good mentors, generous collaborators. The CIW project experience led to Artsreach, which expanded our community constituencies and the range of arts disciplines. Our worksites included youth and adult prisons, service agencies for seriously developmentally challenged adults, community centers in marginalized areas of South Central, Watts and East Los Angeles. We began a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic theatre company that wrote its own material, there was modern dance, African drumming, spoken word poetry, ceramics, book arts,...

Bill Cleveland: [00:00:00] This Episode’s conversation is with Susan Hill. Susan is a good friend with whom I spent many years traversing the, often difficult, confounding, even hilarious, landscape of the of the California Department of Corrections. We spent over a decade bringing artists into institutions up and down the state. Susan's particular beat was Southern California, her creative launching pad an organization called UCLA Artsreach, which she directed. In that position, she functioned as an impresario, an inspiration, a creative thinker, and as a master navigator of difficult and challenging environments bring a band of great artists with her all the way.

In other chapters, Susan also worked with Judy Chicago as a midwife for the iconic feminist art installation The Dinner Party was a principal driver of the historic Art in other Places Conference and is an accomplished textile artist. She has, I think. One of the best minds, and hearts I know for translating human creativity to needs of the human community. In our conversation we talk about how that complex alchemy works, and doesn’t, getting the respect of people who really distrust you, and what happens when the lights go off in a high-security prison classroom.

This is Change the Story / Change the World, A Chronicle of Art and Community Transformation, my nave is Bill Cleveland.

BC: You got it to work.

Susan Hill: [00:01:17] Oh, yeah. Yes. got it to work, got the dogs fed, but really, there should be a rule that you don't call up people in Maine in late February, because we look awful. We have vegetables stored in the basement and we look fairly similar.

BC: [00:01:32] Well, at least you have something to eat.

SH: [00:01:34] Yes, exactly. Exactly.

BC: [00:01:37] So how you be?

SH: [00:01:39] Okay. Maine is one of the states that, has a really low rate of incidence we live in a very small community and on the whole it's been really cooperative. and although there is a very strong contingent here of deniers.

BC: So, my reason for doing this is to give you an opportunity to go into your Rolodex of available stories. But before I start one thing, I would ask is how do you describe that as a way of working in the world?

SH: First of all, I'm going to say, thank you, bill Cleveland. And I really want to acknowledge that you have been a fellow traveler in so many ways. And I'm so grateful for all of that.

But the question of “How do I describe the work?” is really lovely. And when I thought about it, I thought, my first real jobs in the world was --- one, I was a summer waitress all night from when I graduated from high school and all through college. And after college, when I moved to New York, my first jobs were: I was the receptionist because I couldn't type, to the president of the Ford Foundation, and in the holidays, in my spare time, I sold toys at FAO Schwartz. So, the linchpin of me working in the world is good service and fun and interesting people.

BC: [00:03:09] Okay.

SH: [00:03:10] And there were interesting people coming to the Ford Foundation for money, with good ideas. And there were wonderful people coming into FAO Schwartz to buy toys. I consider myself an artist, but I'm self-taught, didn't go to art school--- didn't have those goals. So, I see myself more as a facilitator for good service. I want to work collaboratively, and for the purpose of social change, whether it's small or large, and I really am committed to collaboration. I'm committed to working in council circles so that everyone has an equitable voice, and I'm committed to nonviolence.

BC: [00:03:46] That's a wonderful package.

SH: [00:03:48] it's a Rolodex.

BC: [00:03:50] Yes, it is. So, one of the things that features prominently in my experience with you, is that you have facilitated many things. But the way in which you go about doing that is very much as an artist. And every place I have visited that you have lived has, I would say, is more of a studio than it is a living room or kitchen. And so, I think if you, as a working maker in the world with the thing you love.

SH: [00:04:23] Yes. Well, first of all, I hate housework. But I, I believe implicitly that everybody is creative. And I believe that creativity is not from our brain, it's not part of the logic that we have, that as Jung says, it's actually from the heart, that the soul is located in the heart. And that creativity is a deep intelligence that we all have that manifests differently.

Creativity is very much like cooking. there are certain ways that it demands, that given the ingredients, it has to be done. You can't rush it. You can't overcook it. Yes, I really love walking into places and, creating the environment. I think it's equally important, even if you're borrowing a classroom from the history teacher in the California youth authority prison system, the way that you, what we used to call, create the rules of the room, is as important and has to work in the service of creativity. And then you go about the business of being creative.

BC: [00:05:28] And the other thing, which was implicit in what you said is that the artist is not some kind of elixir that spreads creativity on everybody in the room, but it's an equal opportunity, resource --- everybody there has it.

SH: [00:05:41] Everybody there has it.

BC: [00:05:42] Yep. Yep. given that path, how did you come to it?

SH: [00:05:45] I grew up in very small towns in Massachusetts, south of Boston, quite close to Plymouth. And my grandmother was the oldest of 12 children, six boys, six girls, and they all. lived in that area. So, we had tons of relatives on Cape Cod. We had tons of relatives in Maine. So, we were continually, in these small, new England towns --- going fishing.

BC: [00:06:11] Yeah. Were there other artists in your family was creativity in abundance around you?

SH: [00:06:17] that's an interesting question because I think actually one of the greatest artists in my family, was my grandmother, my little short, Scottish, Anna McDonald McNeilen, grandmother, who was, as I said, the oldest of 12 children. And she was taken out of school when she was probably 10 or 11 to stay home and help her mother. But I think I learned about beauty from her and I learned about making things grow. From her, I learned patience from her. She had an intrinsically artistic soul. We did have one artist in the family, my great aunt, Emily Josephine O'Hare, who was the granddaughter of a celestial navigator on clipper ships.

BC: [00:07:02] Wow.

SH: [00:07:03] And her name was Emily Josephine. Her sister's name was Susan. But Emily Josephine went to Pratt in New York and was an artist and she taught in a private school in Boston if she had shows, and she traveled and everyone thought she was, crazy. So

BC: [00:07:21] yeah.

SH: [00:07:21] it wasn't a good thing to be an artist. But I think the other side of it is that people in my family, women and men alike could make things. And things got made or things got repaired and effortlessly, and that, was always wonderful to see. Yeah.

BC: [00:07:37] Yeah. And with the materials that are available. Which is okay. We call that recycling now. So, A story or two. so what are you going to tell us today?

SH: [00:08:37]] I think, as I thought about this, I do want to acknowledge that we, you and I we're so fortunate to have lived in a golden time when everything aligned and not only that but it completely bore out.

BC: Okay.

SH: Ex-hippie philosophies, that the world is good, and everything will work out. But we were in Arts in Corrections in the earliest days of Arts in Corrections when there was a small number of prisons and the budget was adequate, and there were enlightened people in the community. And in the California legislature that supported that work that saw the benefit of that work. So, we were given a kind of support to do something on a large scale that was quite phenomenal.

Then my experience is that our experiences really deepened as we got to work with more artists. and I think in that system, we also knew that this could not possibly last. The California prison system is I think the largest paramilitary well-armed bureaucracies in the world.

BC: [00:09:07] Yep.

SH: [00:09:07] …dedicated to punishment. What the fuck would did they let us in there for? there was something really deeply prophetic and wonderful about the fact that we knew that it wouldn't last in its earliest incarnation so that we really paid attention. And I think that what was, important was, as I said, learning to be bilingual, so that when we did work with the prison administrators, which we did, I think the partnership was so solid, but we had to speak the same language. We had to acknowledge the same goals.

So, when you, ask about my work and telling stories, I think part of it is to say that I personally went in and was an artist. That's how I started. I was invited by Susan Allen Loewenberg, bless her, of LA theater Works to go and do a large project in what was then the only women's prison. And out of that, I became the director at ArtsReach, which was the Southern California partner for Arts in Corrections. So, I would go in and be a resident artist.

BC: [00:10:56] With an interesting cast of characters, with, I recall, three Manson Family members, right?

SH: [00:11:00] With a very, yeah very interesting cast of characters there. But I also was the director of ArtsReach, which meant that I was in collaboration with all of these institutions and funding sources and artists. We had usually about 150 artists that we could call on. It was usually 50 people under contract at any one time. We wanted the artist teams to look like the prison population, which was largely black and then brown, and then, white, and then "other." Which we did. We had to break a lot of people out of the comfort zone, That kind of collaboration, I think, is something that I learned from. And it informed me for all of the work we did. Our work in prison was good, and we were invited. then to go and duplicate the program in the California Youth Authority, which was a separate prison system for kids ages 12 to 18. Although they could be a little older. We were specifically told that we had to create a theater program. And we did. And we had an ensemble of nine Los Angeles actors that were multilingual diversified, funny, irritating, troublesome, fabulous.

And they were trained, by some of the best which included Laurie Meadoff, Dexter Locke from City Kids in New York, John Bergman and Geese Theater Company, , phenomenal, Rebecca Rice. and they were trained to work in teams and to work with incarcerated kids. And we did plays that they made up. And I think the prison system really thought when they asked for a theater program, I think they meant a talent show. And from there we also worked in continuation high schools in Los Angeles. Multi-generational. Community high schools that were also multi-lingual worked in a, facility, it said over the door for abandoned and neglected girls. it's been, and I've worked in also, I did a program in a elder facility in Los Angeles.

:[00:13:12 And one of the things I will say actually for advice is that I came to believe that we all have a special constituency that we're good at. I was really good in dangerous situations that required , adrenaline, and quick thinking. And I think part of what was always really important to me was that we brought a kind of humanity into the room. And the rules of the room included, that we didn't know anything that it brought the person to be incarcerated. They didn't know that much about us either. And so, when you meet there, as Rumi says, there's a field beyond right and wrong. And it was neutral turf. Also, we were very fortunate that, although the prison system was very racist and gang oriented, that we got mixed groups of people in the room so there would be people in the room who might be enemies in the yard, or certainly not talk to each other, but they became part of the ensemble once in the room.

And then also we never patronized anybody. we just worked to the highest standards we could. We just thought, “Come on, you want to do this good, don't you? Let's do this good.” Which meant in that place music was rehearsed, and there was genuine constructive criticism that everybody shared. And the language was non-violent language. We used given names. And so, when aguard or a staff person or an administrator would come into the room, very often they would come over. to me and say, “I've never heard them call each other anything except their gang name. And he just called him Daniel. He just said he was his friend. Do you know who those two guys are?” “Yeah. That's Daniel and Luis.” Or one guard came up to me and he, watched this kid and he said, ”I didn't know, he could talk. And you have him singing.”

And there was this play that we did, where there was one white kid in the play. And most of the rest of the kids were black. And we were working with some African drummers in it. And the white kid decided he was going to play the sax. “Okay.” And he was going play the fool and, “Okay.” So, he came out first in the play, like the narrator, the guide, and the kids in the audience began to laugh and he began to play his...